


Fuck The A-Team

by Anonymous



Series: Intersections [5]
Category: Hideaway (1995), Holy Man (1998), Invasion of the Body Snatchers - All Media Types, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Marvel, Morning Glory (2010), Powder (1995), The Big Chill (1983), Transylvania 6-5000 (1985)
Genre: Alien Abduction, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Crossover, Desperation, Dimension Travel, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Ensemble Cast, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Plot, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-01 06:08:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16279223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: To kinda, uh, offset the rigorous skill and competence of the A-Team, the Grandmaster elects to add in a secondary group to the Sakaarii fare - the B-Team! Except for a few minor psychics, you know, they're all your average schmos, and their reaction to just about everything is... A little bit different.The A-Team is still the Grandmaster's favourite, don't get him wrong, but ha, he might just visit some of his more regular tortures on the B-Team! Variety is the spice of life and, uh, all that...But honestly, from the B-Team's perspective?Fuckthe A-Team.---Ensemble cast psychological trauma & character exploration fic, featuring a lot of lesser known characters from different Jeff Goldblum roles, heavily leaning into the common Marvel multiverse comments. Please note that this isn't an RPF fic, and that there's no in-universe mention of Mr Goldblum himself - this is all about the craft of the characters he plays.





	1. Prologue: Part One

**DONALD RIPLEY**

Donald comes awake with a start, heaving in a gasp of air. It smells of seaspray and it stings at his throat, and he shifts in his position, feeling around in the dark. He’s in an enclosed space, the surface around him wet to the touch, and he’s bent into it, wood, wood— A barrel? He’s in a barrel?

What the Hell happened?

He grunts, shifting in his place, and he freezes for a moment, trying to take in his confused surroundings. In pitch-darkness, yes, his feet in a puddle of water, and the insides of the wooden barrel are damp… A flicker of light makes its way through a corner of the barrel’s top, and he lets out a sharp noise as a burst of water dribbles through the gap.

The barrel’s in water.

He can feel it bobbing in the waves, feel the regular swell and shift of the water.

Straightening his legs as best he can, Donald pushes his shoulders up against the upper surface of the barrel: it resists him, the wood stronger than he expected it to be, and he groans quietly to himself as he forces his legs to straighten further, trying to run through the possibilities in his mind. He can’t possibly be in the _ocean_ – he’d been in Texas, slap-bang in the middle of… He _can’t_ be.

The lid of the barrel gives way with a splintering of wet wood, and he gasps in a breath as light hits him hard, making him squeeze his eyes tightly shut. There’s warm sun on his face and a light breeze running through his hair, and he slowly tries to get himself used to the sunlight, blinking his eyes open.

Forty feet or so away, he sees the golden beach of the shore through bleary eyes and sea-soaked glasses, littered with debris and rubbish, and he turns in the barrel to look the other way. Donald’s breath catches in his throat, and he feels his lips part. Before him stretches an oceanic expanse of deeply blue water – various ships, most of them made of metal, bob in the waters, surrounded by crates and barrels and other pieces of garbage, but that isn’t what takes Donald’s breath away.

What renders him still is the _sky_ , which is a soft lilac, the colour of lavender soap.

“Powder?” Donald asks, unable to keep the name from tumbling out of his mouth – that’s the only explanation. There’s no place on _Earth_ with a sky like this, so maybe Powder has taken him somewhere, has brought him…

But that doesn’t make any sense.

Donald grunts as the barrel hits rock, and he pulls himself up, clumsily dropping into the water and hauling himself closer to the shore. He walks on shaky legs, a little dazed and dizzy, and he runs a hand through his hair, pulling it back from his face. How did he get here? If it _wasn’t_ Powder – and okay, maybe it was silly of him to end up around here and blame a teenager he hasn’t seen in two years, regardless of what powers he had – then what?

He pulls off his glasses (Christ, why has he _got_ these? Where are his contacts, if he’s dressed?), trying to clear away some of the seaspray clinging to the glass, but it does very little – it’s not as if he has a dry cloth to wipe them with, although, thank _God_ , he’s still dressed. A grey shirt, one of his favourites, a pair of waterlogged slacks (Christ, he’s glad he wasn’t wearing jeans), a pair of sneakers…

Frowning, Donald tries to remember. He’d… He’d just been going to bed last night, right? He remembers it, grading some of the ninth-grade essays on plant biology, correcting Missy Halligan’s diagram of a xylem cell, and he’d been _pooped_ , had set the essays aside, brushed his teeth, slid into bed. He’d bene listening to the radio, had drifted off to some talk-show conspiracists talking about some search-and-rescue mission gone wrong…

Nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Nothing weird.

And yet now, here he is, fully-dressed, soaked through, and-

Somewhere.

There’s a grunt in the sand, and Donald’s head whips down. There’s a man sprawled on his back in the sand, his left arm over his face, and he slowly moves to sit up, shaking his head slightly. There’s sand in his hair and clinging to his clothes, which mercifully are at least dry – some ugly wool sweater, thickly-knitted, a pair of yellow pants, some white sneakers.

“Hey,” Donald says, and he drops to a crouch. “You okay there, buddy?”

“Are we on a beach?” the guy asks, slurring his words slightly, visibly groggy as he blinks himself awake. The arm comes away from his face, and Donald feels his mouth drop open. This guy… Donald reaches up to his own chin, reflexively, as he studies this guy’s out-of-it expression: the shape of the nose, the bow of his lips, the shape of his chin and cheeks, even his _eyes_ …

They have the same face. Sure, it’s a little different – Donald’s not quite as thin, and he’s older, he thinks, older…

“Kid,” he says, “what’s your name?”

“Michael,” the guy says, and he turns to look at Donald, his eyes widening in surprise. “Whoa. Are you me?”

“Don’t think so,” Donald says. The guy isn’t exactly the same – his glasses are old-fashioned, big things with 80s-style frames, and his hair is _terrible_ , dry and cut a little longer but coiffed back from his head. “I’m Donald, Donald Ripley. How’d you get here, Michael?”

“Don’t know,” Michael says, a little hoarsely, and he looks around, taking in the beach around them. In the distance, a few miles away, Donald can see a few tall buildings made of shining gold and silver poking up from the dunes and hills of sand, poking up from all the debris… But now that he’s closer, it doesn’t exactly look like _boats_. All of this shit is made of metal, and it’s all _huge,_ and… Not especially sea-worthy-looking, even in a state of good repair.

It’s aliens. It’s gotta be.

“Hey,” Donald says, a little hurriedly, and he stands to his feet, offering Michael his hand. “Come on, kid, we gotta— Let’s walk in the direction of town, okay? We’ll find someone to give us directions, find our way home.”

“The sky’s purple,” the kid says, a mix of awed and snide.

“Sure is,” Donald agrees, and Michael’s hand grasps at his forearm, letting Donald pull him up and off the sand. Michael pats himself down, pushing off some of the sand, and the two of them stand shoulder-to-shoulder – they’re the same height, but yeah, Michael _is_ a good deal skinnier than Donald is, and without any muscle, either. “You okay to walk?”

“Uh huh,” Michael says: his eyes are slightly defocused, like he’s thinking of something else, like he’s not really with it… But what can Donald do? What’s the play here? The two of them look the same, sure, but— What, are they both abductees? What…?

“Come on,” he says, patting his new twin’s arm, and Michael stumbles slightly, but Donald catches him, keeping him upright. “Come on,” he repeats, a little more gently, and they fall into step together as they make their way up the beach.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**JERRY BARNES**

Jerry comes awake with a jolt, and he looks hurriedly around himself, trying to figure out where exactly he is. He thinks, for just a moment, that he must have fallen asleep in the chair in his office, must have worked too late the night before and not gotten the right amount of coffee into his system, but this room is too dark, too small, to be his office.

It’s a very small room, only eight by eight feet or something similar, and he sits on the singular chair, a hard-backed thing made of a dark wood, with armrests and a single, solid leg… Scant lighting comes from the rectangular panels that line the edges of the ceiling, and one wall is occupied by a broad screen; the other three are bare.

Bare.

No doors.

Where is he?

He remembers last night, remembers it clearly: he’d cooked an omelette and eaten it in small bites as he’d gone through the ratings reports for that week, comparing them against the week before – the channel was doing well, there were new lines of revenue incoming, and especially with the Morning Show doing as well as it is this past year… He’d gone to bed early. He _remembers_ he’d gone to bd early, set to get maybe six hours’ sleep, far more than his usual—

No doors.

Jerry leans forward, to get out of the chair, but a voice says, “Ah ah ah.”

The screen is flickering into life, and Jerry freezes, staring up at him. The face on the screen is… Jerry frowns, tilting his head slightly to the side. He takes in the tanned skin, a little darker than his; the silver hair coiffed back from the head; the honey-coloured eyes, a blue stripe on the chin, all different, but… The shape of the mouth.

That’s what gets him, surprises him – how many times has he stood in front of the mirror, tracing the cupid’s bow of his own lips after Lisa has told him he has her favourite mouth in the world? How many times has he taken in the slight divot to the shape of his upper lip, and the rounded curve of the lower one, hesitated in wiping off Lisa’s lipstick?

More times than he’d admit to. More times than anyone could admit to, with any sense of personal pride.

This guy has the same mouth, smiling, showing white teeth.

The shape of the eyes is the same, even if the colour is different; the nose, the chin, even the _ears_ …

“What is this?” Jerry asks, and the guy leans back away from the camera, sliding back to sit into a high-backed, throne-like chair. He’s dressed like he’s ready for some hitherto unknown subsection at New York Pride, his gaudy outfit bedazzled with sequins and shining fabric; he wears some kind of golden tunic, accented with reds and blues— “Who are you?”

“Mmm, that is, uh, that is _not_ the question for now, sunshine. The question of the, ha, of the hour is… Who are _you_? Are you, aha, are you a good guy, Jeremiah Barnes?” There’s a tingling in the back of Jerry’s throat, an odd sensation as he feels the saliva drain out of his mouth, feels his mouth go utterly dry; suddenly, every single one of Jerry’s hairs seem to be standing on end, and his blood is very cold.

“Listen,” Jerry says, forcing his voice to remain even. “I don’t know what you want, but whatever it is, we can— We can ort it, uh, we can sort it out. Is it… Is it money? Something, uh, something political that the channel has run? Because I—”

“I don’t care about your cute little _TV_ station,” the stranger with Jerry’s face says, his voice mildly chiding even though his face keeps smiling – Jerry’s face. How did they even _do_ this, track his facial features and just run them through a computer imaging program? Because this, this doesn’t look like CGI – this is far beyond the Uncanny Valley, and looks _completely_ real. The image just seems too crisp to be computer-generated, to be _not_ real, but the movements are way too organic for it to be a mask.

An animatronic, maybe? But who the Hell has the time and money to build an animatronic to frighten a hostage?

No. Has to be CGI.

But _why_?

“No, honey, I, mmm, I hate to tell ya, but I’ve—” The guy tilts his head from one side to the other, gesturing with his hands in no particular direction, and with no apparent meaning. He wears electric blue nail polish on his slightly-long fingernails, and when Jerry glances down at his sandaled feet, he sees the same attention has been laid on the toenails, too. “I’ve _borrowed_ you, Jer-Bear. Just for a little while.”

“Borrowed me,” Jerry repeats softly. “I have a family back home, sir, I—”

“Nuh _uh_ ,” the guy purrs, shaking one finger at him from the screen. Jerry’s heart is beginning to hammer in his chest, and he forces himself to swallow hard – even when he’d been a young reporter, in his twenties and thirties, running about warzones and thinking nothing could ever kill him (and frankly, not caring if it could), he’d never been in a situation like _this_. What the Hell has this guy got him here for? “You haven’t got a _family_. Don’t you, mmm, don’t you lie to me, honey – there’s just no point! You’ve got your cute little apartment, you’ve got your two goldfish you, ha, you inherited from your brother when _he_ died a few years back, and… Lisa, isn’t it? That little sugar baby you keep on call?”

Jerry grips his fists tightly against his thighs, and he feels a muscle in his jaw twitch, but he isn’t sure what to say, what he _can_ say. He needs a notebook, a pen, needs to be able to offer some kind of retort, needs to negotiate his way out of here or jus make sure this guy doesn’t go after Lisa or anybody from work, but…

The guy beams.

“You gonna cooperate?” he asks, raising his silver eyebrows, and Jerry hesitates for a second before he slightly inclines his head. “ _Good!”_ The image on the screen shifts, and Jerry sees not this guy, but somebody else, a younger man with thick, dark curls and a heavy blindfold drawn tightly over his eyes, another black scrap of cloth tied tightly around his mouth. He can’t have been tied up for too long, Jerry knows, because there’s not yet much moisture on the fabric gripped between his teeth, but the bonds look _tight_. The kid’s wrists and hands are tied behind his back with rope, and he wears a loose, camel overcoat over a shirt and pants.

He’s trembling in front of the camera, visibly shaking in his place, and Jerry feels his chest pang, but— He doesn’t know this kid, does he? He doesn’t think so. He doesn’t know any young men with hair like that.

“This, this is, uh, this is Jack Bellicec! Say _hello_ to Jerry, Jackie.” Jack jolts at the sound of the stranger’s voice, and Jerry winces as he hears him moan something unintelligible through the gag, and hears the unmistakable – even muffled – sound of a quiet sob. “Now, as you can, uh, as you can see, Jer-Bear, Jack here, he’s… He’s a little tied up right now. What I want _you_ to do, is, mmm, just walk through my little maze with him. Jack’s gonna walk in front, and you just need to tell him which way to walk, okay? No touching! And you should, ha, you should really stay a few feet behind him.”

“A maze?” Jerry repeats, feeling sick to his stomach. “Why are you doing this? Just let me—”

“There are one or two, haha, little obstacles,” the voice continues, as if not hearing him, as if not even bothering to listen to him. “You know, steep drops, beds of nails, I, uh, I think there’s some _hyenas_ down one corridor… Good luck!” The screen goes dark, and the entire wall begins to descend, sliding slowly into the ground with an electric blur. Facing away from him, looking forward into a narrow, slightly dark corridor, is the kid from the screen.

“Jack?” Jerry asks, taking a slow step forward. The kid jolts, and he turns to face Jerry’s direction.

“Mmm! Mmm, mmm—”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Jerry says, reaching out for the blindfold, but—

It’s like a whole shock runs through his arm, sudden, hot, and agonising, and Jerry cries out in pain, jumping back from the kid. It’s just like an electric shock, and it fucking _hurts_ —

“No touching, Jer-Bear,” the voice says from somewhere above him, disembodied and presumably coming from a speaker somewhere, as Jack and Jerry both stand a few feet apart, both of them shaking. “I did, uh… I did _say_ that, right?”

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**HATCH HARRISON**

Hatch comes awake slowly, blearily, bit by bit.

He is aware, initially, of the darkness. It’s very, _very_ dark down here, except for a ring of light that’s coming from far, far up above them – maybe forty or fifty feet up, something like that. He can see from that little disc of light that they’re in somewhere narrow, like—

“We at the bottom of a well?” the other guy says, before coughing quietly. They’re shoulder to shoulder, and Hatch can vaguely feel in the pitch-black that the other guy is tall like he is, his long legs folded up and his feet brushing against the other wall. It’s slightly damp down here, but there’s no odour, and it’s only a little bit cold.

“Seems like it,” Hatch replies. “You remember getting here?”

“Nope.”

“Me neither.” He remembers… Hm. He remembers last night, at least – he and Lindsey had been celebrating Regina getting her first college choice, their little girl off to _Columbia_ , and they’d been pretty drunk, both of them. He remembers the transition from wine to spirits, and he remembers the two of them dancing in the middle of the floor, changing jackets and leaning heavy on each other as they’d stumbled toward the taxi… Regina had promised to make them breakfast, had all but carried Lindsey up the stairs as Hatch had crawled after them – she’d been home nearly two hours before Lindsey and Hatch had been, and had made sure to tell them so. But—

No hangover. There’s no pounding in his head, no dryness in his mouth, and while there are chunks of memory that are hazy with the drink (Hatch remembers being sprawled out on the stairs and Regina laughing at him, but he doesn’t remember whether he actually got _off_ the stairs, doesn’t remember getting into bed; most of the bar is hazy except for little flashes of memory; he remembers getting into the taxi and falling out of it, but none of the journey), he knows he did get home.

But it’s real, Hatch knows. He has to meditate every morning, these days, if he wants to make sure the dreams aren’t too bad – something about having his third eye or chakras or whatever ripped open by the trauma of the experience of death, reanimation, possession, leaving him open and vulnerable, but… But there are benefits, he supposes. He knows right now that this is real, that his soul is in his body, and he knows that Regina and Lindsey are nowhere close by.

“We need to get out of here,” the guy next to him quietly. The other guy sounds calm, too, as calm as Hatch is, and Hatch has to wonder if he’s from a similar situation…

“This might be a dream,” Hatch says, testing the waters. “Astral projection, something like that.”

“Astral _what_?” the guy demands. “Are you— Are you crazy? We’re stuck down a damned well well!”

“Just checking it _isn’t_ a dream,” Hatch replies smoothly, and he slowly pulls himself to his feet, feeling blindly against the walls. “Have you— Have you been, uh, in a situation like this before?”

“No,” the other guy says. “Seen some, uh— I’ve seen weird shit, but never woke up down a well… I got drunk last night, really drunk, I was out with my fiancée. But I remember getting home, I swear I do, I think…”

“Me too,” Hatch replies, pressing on a piece of stone that has a little less mortar around it, but it doesn’t budge. “Me and my wife, we were out the whole night, got home late, but I remember getting in. Serial killer, kidnapper, some kinda freak, they— It’s a complicated M.O. to take one guy once he gets into his house, let alone two and shove ‘em together.” There’s a short pause.

“Are you— You a detective or something?” the other guy asks, voice cautious, and Hatch lets out a low, breathless huff of sound.

“No,” Hatch mutters. “But a guy tried to kill my daughter last year. Makes you research these things.”

“Oh, shit,” the other guy says, and Hatch focuses on the stone. They’re made of smooth, slightly damp brick – too smooth for it _not_ to have been washed over by water for a long time. It’s not a porous rock, either: it’s something marble-esque, but wells aren’t made of marble themselves… Solid, anyway. He traces the lines of the brick, trying to feel for gaps between the stones, and he hears the rustle of clothing as the other guy stands up.

“Run your hands along the brick, see if you can find a gap in the stone,” Hatch says quietly. “What’s your name?”

“Ricky,” the other guy says. “Ricky Hayman. You?”

“Hatch Harrison,” he replies. “Where are you from?”

“Florida,” Ricky says, and Hatch frowns. “Miami.”

“ _Miami_? Shit. Well, I’m from Southern California. L.A. County. Whatever the Hell this is, _one_ of us has been dragged over state lines… Shit.” And it doesn’t feel like California, either – Hatch doesn’t know how much he believes in _ley-lines_ , but he felt the difference between California and Nevada when he and Lindsey took Regina to Vegas for a show last year, felt it every morning when he woke up… The place around him? It’s unfamiliar. Hatch has never been to Florida, even _before_ the incident with the possession, so maybe this is it.

“Uh, yoo-hoo,” says a voice, and Hatch looks up toward the ring, leaning back and feeling his shoulders brush against Ricky’s as they both try to stand in the middle of the well’s base, which is flat and mercifully even… They are the same height. Almost exactly, judging by how their shoulders are blade-to-blade here. There’s a guy silhouetted in the ring of light, resting his chin on his hand. “Ricky and, uh… _Hatch_ , is it? What kinda name is that?”

“The one my mom gave me,” Hatch replies, and the guy laughs, the sound ringing as it comes down the well. “Where the Hell are we?”

“Oh, you two?” the guy asks, sweetly. “You two are in _trouble_. I, uh, I suggest you start, mm— Trying to get out, by the way. That water isn’t _just_ water.”

“What— _Shit!”_ Water suddenly rushes across the floor, soaking them in ankle-deep water, and it’s _freezing_ cold… Shit, shit, _shit_ … Ricky yells, stumbling against Hatch.

“There’s something— There’s something in the water,” he hisses out. “Big. _Scaly_.”

“Uh, yeah, that would be the run-off,” the stranger at the top of the well says. “You know, I bought all these flesh-eating eels for this big thing with Ian and David and there was a big river and… Well. You don’t know those guys yet! So, uh, I’d try to get yourselves _out_ of there, boys!”

Flesh-eating eels… It’s not something he wants to really think about, even if this _is_ a dream (which it isn’t).

“Throw us a damned rope!” Ricky yells, but Hatch knows he won’t.

“Back to back,” Hatch says, leaning back. “Link your arms with my arms— Yeah, like that. You jog, row, anything like that?”

“A little,” Ricky says, and there’s a rising panic in his voice, but they don’t have time for that.

“Okay,” Hatch says. “Right leg forward. Put the sole of your foot _flat_ against the wall, in line with your mid-thigh.” He hears the slight splash as Ricky moves, but he can feel Ricky trembling, and he interlinks their fingers, gripping tightly so that Ricky doesn’t pull himself free. His hands are warmer than Hatch’s – Hatch always runs a little cold, since he died. Reanimation’ll do that to a fella. “Okay, left leg. Lean back against me to give you the pressure you need, and make sure we stay _flat_ , so that you don’t veer one way or the other.”

There’s a short pause wherein Hatch hears Ricky draw in a high-pitched, heady breath, but then, as one, they shift their legs. It’s a weird feeling, being suspended above the water, feeling the pressure in his back as they take a moment to breathe.

“I can’t do this,” Ricky whispers. Closing his eyes for a second, Hatch focuses on his own palms, trying to draw on his own reserve of calm and push it outwards, imagining it flowing from his hands into Ricky’s, imagining it calming his fast-beating heart and his quickened breathing…

“If you can’t do this,” Hatch says in a measured tone. “We both die.”

“Okay,” Ricky says quietly: he sounds calmer. Maybe a little too calm – okay, so he— Hatch overdid that one. That’s what he gets for only practising with Lindey and Regina. He’ll think about it later.

“Right leg, same distance,” Hatch says, and as one, Ricky and Hatch shift their legs upward.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**DOCTOR CHARLES BRODY**

“Hey, hey, you awake? Buddy. _Buddy_.” There’s a tapping against Charles’ face, and Charles swallows hard as he shifts in his place, trying to press himself back against the freezing cold wall. Where is he? Where is he? He can’t even see the guy in front of him, the guy patting his cheek with a dry, calloused palm—

“I’m awake,” Charles mumbles, blinking rapidly. Why is it so dark? He looks up, seeing a ring of light far above them… Are they— Are they in a well? “Agh!” Charles blurts out, and he jumps to his feet as water rushes over his pants, the freezing cold seeping against his skin. He realizes too late that he’s grabbed hold of the other guy, and is all but hugging him against his chest.

“Seriously?” the other guy says.

“I can’t swim!” Charles says.

“What? What do you mean, you can’t swim!?” The water is already gushing around Charles’ ankles, and he glances from the floor up toward the disc of light above them – it’s maybe forty five, fifty feet to the top, and at the rate the water is rushing out from wherever… It won’t take too long.

“ _Help!”_ Charles yells, hearing the way his voice bounces off the hard stones of the well’s edges, but no answer comes, nothing— “I really can’t swim, I _can’t_ —”

“Okay, okay,” the guy says, and he pulls Charles away from his body. “Turn around.”

“What? What, no, we—”

“Back to back, feet against the wall. We can do this,” the other man says, his voice quiet but authoritative, and Charles bites down hard on his lower lip. Where the Hell are they? Is this a dream? It has to be a dream, a nightmare, a nightmare, but where, why, what—?

But if this is a dream…

“Okay,” Charles says obediently, feeling himself shiver as the water rushes around his feet, and he turns. Back-to-back. His legs are shaking, his arms, too – he’s _freezing_ , but… He isn’t waking up. Why can’t he just wake up?

“Okay,” the other guy says. “Right leg first, same height as your knee. One, two, three—” Charles raises his leg, pressing his toe against the wall. “The whole of the sole of your foot, not just your toe or your heel.”

“Oh,” Charles says, and he flattens his foot slightly. Carolyn… Maybe it’s silly of him, to think of her at a time like this, in a dream, a dream, but Carolyn always knows what to do – that’s why he married her, isn’t it?

(“ _You’re a genius, Charlie, but sometimes I feel like you can’t see further than a foot in front of your face.”_

_“Well, I can’t, Carrie, you know that. That’s why I wear glasses.”_

_“God, you’re the stupidest man alive. Take off your shirt.”_ )

“Left leg,” the other guy says, and Charles moves once more on the count of three, but it feels weird and he nearly loses his balance: the other guy is quick about linking their arms together, locking their elbows against one another so that Charles can’t let go. He isn’t shaking. He isn’t cold. This guy— He’s _calm_. “Okay. Right leg.” They move like that for a while, a slow, uncertain rhythm – each time, the other guy patiently counts out the “one, two, three,” and Charles is grateful for the distraction the counting gives him… “What’s your name?”

“Huh?” Charles asks as they shift the right leg upward. He can hear the rushing of the water down below them, and he tries to stop himself from looking up or looking down into the dark, tries to stop himself from wondering exactly how far they’ve climbed, and how far they’ve got to go… Maybe better to close his eyes.

So he does.

“Your name, man,” the guy says. “First name, last name. A lot of people have them.”

“Oh,” Charles says. “My name is— Charles.”

“Charles,” the guy repeats. “Okay, well, my name’s Zach. Detective Zach Nichols, of the NYPD. Left foot.”

“New York?” Charles asks. “Oh. Where— Are we in New York?”

“I don’t know,” Zach says. “Why, where you from? Right foot.”

“Um,” Charles says. “Vancouver.”

“Van— Like, _Canada_? Left foot. Right foot.”

“Uh huh,” Charles says, and they take a few more steps together, moving upward, upward— Charles’ foot slips, and he lets out a yell, but Zach remains still, holding them steady as Charles hurriedly slams his foot back into place, breathing heavy.

“Hey,” Zach says quietly. “Hey, hey, Charles, uh— Charlie. It’s fine. We’re nearly there, we’re three-quarters of the way up. And if we fall, that’s okay too – you can’t swim, but I can. Okay?”

“My wife calls me Charlie,” Charles whispers.

“Well, we’re gonna get you home to your wife,” Zach says. It strikes Charles that that’s an odd thing for somebody in a dream to say – it’s not abstract enough, not weird enough. Zach dreams of cats and dogs and weird things, not… Not situations like _this_. “Left foot.” There’s a long pause as Charles shivers in his place, terrified to so much as move a muscle, and he hears Zach quietly inhale. “Charles,” Zach says. “Left foot.”

Charles steels himself, and he moves his left foot upward.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**JACK HARRISON**

Jack stands alone in the desert, the sun beating down on him.

He’s… Alone.

Looking down at himself, he sees that he’s still dressed for bed, wearing his boxer shorts and a loose t-shirt he’s fairly certain is Gil’s, and not his own. The thing’s emblazoned with a picture of a damned _puppy_ , so it can’t be his – he’d just thrown it on before bed without paying any attention. Jack’s bare feet rest flat on the hot, red dirt, and there’s already a faint sheen of sweat on his skin.

Where’s Gil?

That’s the one thought that permeates his psyche, bites through him even as all the other questions come to mind: _Where is he? How hot is it? How did he get here? Why isn’t he dressed? What happened last night? What’s—_

Where’s Gil?

Jack inhales slowly, and he looks around.

For miles and miles in every direction, all he sees is an expanse of red dirt, a lilac sky… Lilac. That’s a funny colour for a sky to be. The sun is already high in the sky, and it’s _big_ , too, bigger than he’s ever seen the sun before, like twice the size of the sun usually.

“Gil?” Jack asks, and his throat is parched, his voice cracking slightly. There’s no answer.

This must be a dream – it _has_ to be a dream, or a nightmare, or even something else entirely, some sort of astral journey, perhaps a spirit trap. He’d hated the last spirit trap, and that had put him right at the bottom of the ocean, had made him walk a mile across the seafloor until he’d found the edge and he’d been able to yell for Gil to get him out, and Gil had somehow heard the psychic scream.

Spirit trap, then.

It has to be a spirit trap.

The sun is rising from one direction, so— So that’s the direction he’d head in. Has to be done.

He has to walk.

Taking a step forward, he hisses in pain as he feels the hot dirt against his sole, but he keeps on moving. He has to walk, has to walk until he reaches the edge of the spirit trap, then he can call for Gil – once he calls for Gil, Gil will be able to hear him, and Gil will be able to get him out.

It only took him four or five hours, last time… Once he _found_ Jack.

He can make it.

He has to.


	2. Prologue: Part Two

**DONALD RIPLEY**

The beach is solid, and although the sand shifts slightly under their feet as they walk, Michael and Donald make good progress as they move up and over the dunes, toward the city. This has to be to do with Powder, somehow, Donald is sure – there’s nothing remarkable about Donald himself, _except_ for his connection to Powder, and that must have earmarked him for… What? Abduction? Dimensional travel?

Something like that, anyway.

In the distance, silhouetted against the purple skies as they come to the crest of a big dune, they can see the palace.

And it is palatial, that much is certain – it’s a gigantic building with shining golden spires that reach up high into the sky, thousands and thousands of feet tall. Banners in red and blue hang from some of the windows and balconies of the huge, sprawling building, and Donald can spy the ant-like movements of people in some of the windows or archways, walking across bridges between towers.

“What is this?” Michael asks quietly, and then, in an even smaller voice, “Are we dead?” There’s an undercurrent of something almost hopeful in his voice, and Donald shoots him a concerned glance, but Michael isn’t looking at Donald. Michael is staring out over the expanse before them, at the shantytown that starts a few kilometres in front of them, which transitions into proper buildings, and then presumably meets the palace.

“I don’t think so,” Donald replies, and he looks out toward the shantytown. There are people in the distance, bustling back and forth, and even from here, Donald can see that those people aren’t…

“That group of men have purple skin,” Michael says. There’s a level of detachment in his voice, an almost dream-like quality, that genuinely makes Donald a little worried, and once more he looks at Michael, then pats his arm.

“Come on,” Donald says. “Act natural: head high, just keep walking. We’ll go toward the palace – if there’s any records of how we got here, that’s where they’ll be, and if they’re not there, they’ll know where to go.”

“You done this before?” Michael asks, and Donald laughs softly, rubbing the back of his neck. The heat isn’t unbearable, not with how close they are to the water offering a cooling spray that occasionally comes through the air as mist, but it _is_ hot, and Donald certainly doesn’t envy anybody who might be farther inland.

“No,” Donald murmurs, thinking of all the times he’s lain awake at night, thinking of how Powder had disappeared in a sudden crack of sprawling lightning, the way he’d been able to feel the kid’s essence _all around_ them, as part of the air, the ground, the clouds, the way the lightning had split open the sky— “I’ve just rehearsed it a lot, in my head, I guess. Kinda… Not that I _expected_ something like this. But— It was on the cards.”

“This is a dream,” Michael says with abruptly down-to-earth certainty as they begin to descend down the dune, moving toward the shantytown. His eyes have lost their defocused quality, and there’s a hard line to his jaw, which looks to be clenched tightly; whatever aliens they can see in the shantytown, they’ve broken whatever idea Michael had about… Well. Being _dead_.

“I don’t think it is,” Donald replies, trying to keep his tone gentle, but Michael is already scanning the horizon, taking in what elements of the shantytown they can see.

Built of the same debris that litters the beaches, many of the houses here are welded together of thick, heavy pieces of metal and spacejunk, but their architecture seems to have been done with skill, even though the materials look to just be bits of trash and crap. Each of the joints seem to be welded very smoothly, and Donald sees weathervanes and complicated machines outside some of the homes, sees artisan furniture that must have been difficult to form out of trash.

There are other buildings, as well as homes – Donald recognizes one as a pharmacy or an alchemist of some kind, judging by the symbols that line the door and by the different coloured smokes that come from its chimneys; there are open halls and what seem to be public rooms; Donald even sees shared allotments and little gardens where shrubs and fruit trees grow straight from the moist dirt beneath them. The dirt roads that run between the neatly segmented buildings are made of a mix of sand and soil, and they leave prints in the dust behind them as they move.

Different kinds of people walk past them, and Donald is careful not to stare, but he takes them in as best he can. People with skins in all colours walk past he and Michael as they make their way further into the shanty town – skins in deep reds and bright greens, blues and pinks, browns and blacks and greys, purples and oranges, chalky whites and shimmering yellows… Some of them have skin that is like human skin, but a little more varied in its consistency; others have leathery hides that remind Donald of sharks and fish; others still have scales; and Donald even sees people with thick, furry coats or hair all over their bodies.

“This isn’t Kansas anymore,” Donald mutters quietly, and beside him, Michael slowly nods his head. “Where you from?”

“New York,” Michael says quietly. “I’m from Albany. You?”

“Lansing, Michigan,” Donald says, and Michael glances to look at him, his eyebrows raising in surprise.

“I went to school in Michigan,” Michael says. “Went to UoM.”

“Shit, really?” Donald grins. “That’s my alma mater. What year did you graduate?”

“’73,” Michael says, and Donald stops, turning to stare at him. They stop short in the middle of the street, and Michael looks at Donald quizzically, his brow furrowing. “What?”

“’73?” Donald repeats, slowly. “How old are you?”

“Thirty-one,” Michael answers, and Donald narrows his eyes just slightly. He’s thirty-one years old, but he graduated in ’73 – meaning that Michael is living in, what, 1983, ’84? And yet Donald, the world he’d come from, it’s the year 1997. “Why, how old are you?”

“Thirty-six,” Donald murmurs, drawing his hand slowly over the side of his mouth. “But my graduation was in ’82.” Michael’s mouth opens, and he stares at Donald uncomprehendingly, slowly shaking his head slightly.

“But I don’t understand. If we’re— How are we related? What makes us the same? What… I mean, how did we get _here_ , why us two?” Donald tries to run it through his head – they have the same facial features, same species, but they have to be from different timestreams, from different universes entirely…

“I don’t know,” Donald says. “Come on. Let’s keep— Oh, shit.”

There’s a huge building to their right, taking up a big part of the space, and it’s easily several sizes larger than any of the shanties, a great dome of mismatched spacefare that has been carefully glued and welded together, and is several storeys tall with a great, domed roof. Above the double doors, which are wide open, there is a huge image made in stained glass, and Donald stops to stare up at it.

To the right is somebody androgynous, marble-skinned with long, black hair and a complex set of blue robes that shine in the glittering light that comes through the glass. They’re holding a golden jug in their pale hands, and have a small smile quirking thin lips: a halo of light surrounds the figure’s neck and shoulders, seeming to span out from their chest, and it reminds Donald of the halos in Christian art.

To the left is another figure, and this one, Donald knows is a man, because… The facial features are _theirs_. He recognizes the nose, the jawline, the shape of the years – even the height, compared to the other figure. This guy has silver hair and a smirk on his face, as well as a blue stripe cutting through his chin, and he’s holding out a cup to the figure with the jug: there’s a halo around his shoulders too…

“Is that— Is that like… A god?” Michael asks softly.

“Yeah,” Donald says. “Seems like it.”

“He looks just like us,” Michael murmurs, seeming utterly spellbound as he takes a step onto the step of the temple, peering right up at the stained-glass imagery. Donald nods his head, and he allows his fingers to ghost up to his chin, tracing a line down the middle of it as if it might help him understand what such a mark might be for – assuming, of course, that it is a tattoo or paint of some kind, and isn’t some biological thing, like a seam of flesh. It must be a mark of status, somehow, he supposes: the other figure doesn’t have one, though, and he has to wonder precisely why the double has one, but not the stranger.

If the blue stripe of paint is a mark of upper status, maybe that makes the other figure a servant or an attendant of some kind, but Donald doesn’t think so, even if he is pouring something out from the golden jug in his hands. The halos, after all, are the same size, and the same colour, with no difference between them, and these are the only two figures portrayed, both in the foreground, which has to be significant. Maybe it’s symbolic in some way, the jug – maybe the dark-haired figure is a provider, a deity of libations, or even life itself, if the concept of water as life is present on this planet too.

“We should keep moving,” Donald murmurs as he notices Michael rolling up his sleeves. His sweater has already been tied around his waist, and now he’s pushing up his shirt to bare his arms to the air, a little sweat shining on his skin. Donald’s lived in Texas nearly ten years now, and isn’t nearly as sensitive to the heat as this guy, and he doesn’t envy him the sensitivity – even now, Donald is a little bit warm, and the wetness has almost entirely evaporated from his wet clothes. Even if the heat isn’t so bad for him, he is aware that the both of them might well burn under the continuous light of the sun, left out in this too long.

The shantytown spans miles, but they keep an even pace, moving forward at a steady pace. How long have they been walking now, since they left the beach? At least three or four hours, Donald is certain, and his thirst is beginning to pang at the back of his throat and on his dry tongue; in the pit of his stomach, he feels the beginnings of hunger too.

When they come to the point where the shanties transition into the city proper, there is at least some relief: the buildings are much taller here, providing more shade, and broad-leafed trees that are heavy with ripe fruit line the city streets, which are neatly paved in coloured pricks of yellow, pink, and blue. The trees offer shelter, but they also pump a little moisture into the air, and release a sweet scent that permeates the air – a scent that Donald inhales deeply, taking it right into his lungs. It’s not familiar, not like any scent he’s ever smelled before – there’s a sense of spice in the sweetness, and a sense of acidity as well.

The buildings here aren’t the same as those of the shantytown: they’re built of marble bricks or smooth stone with accents of hard, varnished wood, and Donald curiously takes in the square, heavyset architecture, which somehow has an air of easy grace despite the weight of the buildings. Neatly planted flowers line the edges of many of these homes, and some of them even have window boxes or pots of plants and shrubbery on their balconies. Aliens are still wandering around, with a similar kind of variety as those in the shantytown, and a group of yellow, spiny children rush past them laughing their spiky heads off, chasing after a silver ball of shining light. Donald can’t help the slight smile on his face as they pass them by.

“This is different,” Donald murmurs, standing on the line where the shantytown’s dirt road gives way to the brick path. There is no wall or physical border or separation between the debris-made outskirts and the start of the city proper – the dirt path seamlessly blends into the stone pattern of the neat, prick paving, and Donald crouches to examine it as Michael seats himself on a marble bench in the shade of what looks like a blue-leafed plum tree.  The dirt really _does_ fade into the brick. The transition is so smooth, in fact, that the brick and the dirt are melded together, as if the brick pieces have grown organically outward instead of being laid by hand or machine.

Is that possible?

Well, it must be _possible_ , but why would that happen? What—

“You boys okay?” says a voice from the side of the street, and Donald stands up from his crouched position. The man before them reminds Donald of a domestic cat, his eyes round and set shallowly in his head, his ears large and coming like half cones from the upper corners of his skull. His whiskers, which span out nearly a half a foot on each side of his face, twitch as he looks between Michael and Donald, and Michael stands hurriedly from the bench as if he’s been caught doing something wrong.

The cat man looks at Donald’s face, his mouth slightly open and his pupils dilating and widening to allow more light in; he looks from Donald to Michael, and then he takes a slow step back. His long robes trail on the ground, and they are made of a soft, periwinkle blue, draping his form just like the figure’s in the stained glass had.

“We just, um, landed,” Donald says, slowly. “We’ve been making our way towards the palace, I— We’re not sure how we got here.”

“The Grandmaster must have summoned you,” the cat man whispers in a reverent tone, and Donald watches as he draws one furry knuckle from the base of his lips down to the tip of his chin – it looks like a ritualised movement, and it reminds Donald, inescapably, of when Catholics on the TV cross themselves. “I will summon the city guards, and they will take you to the palace, take you to him…”

“What’s your name?” Michael asks, and the cat man looks at him, his whiskers twitching.

“Riyat, sir,” he says immediately, bowing his head slightly. “High Priest Riyat.”

“The guards will take us to the palace, to this— to this Grandmaster?” Donald asks, and Riyat nods once more. “Okay, um— Would you call them? Please? Thank you.” Riyat gestures with clawed hands for them to seat themselves on the bench, and Michael and Donald slowly sit down on the marble surface, staying still in their places. Riyat hurries away, rushing in the direction of the temple they’d passed by, and Donald looks down at the regular pattern of the brick beneath them. “He’s frightened of us,” Donald says.

“Yeah,” Michael whispers softly, and Donald wonders if Michael is feeling the same incalculable dread that Donald is feeling, the same uncertain fear. Together, they sit on the bench in silence, for nearly an hour, until a woman in yellow armour walks down the cobbles toward them, and gestures silently for them to stand.

 ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**JERRY BARNES**

Jerry is sweating like he’s never sweated before, even when Lisa had convinced him tantric sex would be _fun_ , and that it would be _easy_ , and had proceeded to ride him until he was certain he would _die_ from it. Jack Bellicec is… _clumsy_. He keeps stumbling forward as Jerry gives him instructions, and every time, Jerry feels his heart jump into his throat – he doesn’t want to be responsible for this boy’s death or his injury, and there are _spikes_ in the ground; there are flames; there are _monsters!_

Jerry only wishes he could grab hold of him and drag him back, just shove the boy _behind_ him so that he can walk first instead of letting Jack move ahead of him—

“Stop!” Jerry says sharply, and Jack skids to a stop, so fast that he nearly topples back onto the ground, and has to brace himself against the wall. He’s breathing heavily around the gag in his mouth, and Jerry feels a pang of pain in his chest, hates… “It’s okay, Jack, it’s okay. We’re nearly there – I can see the end.”

 _“_ Mmm mmmf,” comes the muttered response, and Jerry feels himself frown.

“I am not _lying_ ,” he retorts, pushing a little indignation into his voice, and Jack shivers, but then he sets his head to face toward the ground, his shoulders slumping slightly. Jerry oughtn’t make him feel so bad – he _is_ lying, after all. “Okay, Jack, it’s— It’s alright, Jack, okay? We’re going to be okay.”

“Mmm,” Jack hums through the gag, and Jerry wishes he could just _touch_ him, touch his shoulder, give him a hug, even. It’s not fair, for the poor kid to have to be going through this, when he looks like he’s barely eighteen years old, when he’s just a _boy_ … Jerry doesn’t have children. He’s never had children – has always thought about it, vaguely, has always considered what it might be like to have a son or daughter, but…

Well.

Jerry’s nearly sixty, still— Still single, officially. Jerry has no illusions as to the depth of Lisa’s attraction to him, doesn’t pretend that she could possibly want him for anything more than the way he dotes on her or the power he has at the news station: Jerry is a sad old man who should have gotten married while he had the chance, and has no chance at children now.

It’s not something he should think about.

Particularly not now.

“Okay, Jack, take a step forward— That’s alright, and another, and another. Two more. Two more.” Jack takes shuffling steps, adjusting his shoulders slightly, and Jerry takes a few steps forward, making sure to keep a distance of a few feet between them as he cranes his neck to look around Jack. “Okay, stop, stop.” Jack does, a little more smoothly this time, not letting himself falter, and Jerry looks around the two corners. “Turn to your right— A few more degrees. Yeah. Okay, keep going.”

And as they turn into the corner, Jerry feels desperate relief burn in his chest.

“See?” Jerry whispers softly. “That’s— There you go, that’s it. Keep walking. A little farther forward, that’s it, that’s it, and—” Jack stumbles as he steps through the archway, out into the light of day, and Jerry squints slightly as he steps outside after him. They’re on a wide balcony, a grassy carpet of flowers spread out beneath them, and Jerry shudders as he takes in the breeze.

Jerry’s weak knees finally buckle, and he drops down onto the grass.

Blinking rapidly, he forces his eyes to adjust to the bright light, and he tries to ignore the desperate nausea clawing at his throat as he takes in the world _outside_ the balcony. They’re on the edge of some shining, golden tower, and they’re overlooking another world entirely. The skies are lilac, and the land is like nothing he’s ever seen… He must have been drugged, at some point, or maybe _this_ is computer-generated, somehow.

“Jack, come here,” Jerry says quietly, even as their abductor casually walks from the open doors of the balcony, slowly clapping his hands together. Jack drops to his knees, and Jerry undoes the gag first. “I’m going to untie the blindfold, but don’t open your eyes right away, okay, kid? The sun’s too bright to take it all at once.” The ribbon over his eyes at least comes away very easily, and Jerry throws it onto the grass. The stranger is watching them with a wide grin on his face, looking pleased to see them having made their way out…

“Okay,” Jack says hoarsely, and Jerry reaches to undo the bindings at his wrists, undoing the rope as quickly as he can. Once his hands are free, Jack releases an exhalation of relief, rolling his shoulders, and he murmurs, “Thank you.” He turns to face Jerry, and Jerry stares at his face, trying to trace what exactly is familiar in it – he’s only young, but there’s something Jerry recognizes in the set of his nose, his jaw, his ears…

“It’s okay, kid,” Jerry murmurs, patting Jack’s shoulder gently, and he draws his hand back. “Are you alright?” Jack nods, and very slowly, he opens his eyes, firstly keeping one squeezed shut, and then opening them both. Blinking a few times, he looks at Jerry blearily, a relieved smile on his face, but when his eyes come into focus, taking in Jerry’s expression, something changes in them.

He stares at Jerry, studying his face, and then his mouth opens, and he stumbles back onto his ass in the grass.

“Jack?” Jerry asks, leaning in, and Jack whimpers out a noise, a harsh and ugly noise that sounds more like it should be coming from a wounded animal instead of a person, and Jerry says, “Jack? Jack, are you okay?” And he sees it now, Jerry sees it: just like the stranger, this young man has a face just like Jerry had had when he was younger, has exactly the same features.

Jack starts _screaming_ , the sounds dragging ragged out of his throat, and Jerry stares, horrified, at the way he scrambles away, his hands and feet shuffling over the grass. He’s sobbing openly, letting out terrified wails of noise, and Jerry is powerless to do anything but _stare_ at him.

“See,” the stranger purrs, taking a delicate step forward, closer to Jerry, and slinging his arm around Jerry’s shoulder. His skin is much hotter than Jerry had expected, too hot to be _normal_ , and Jerry shudders. “Jackie here, uh… He’s had some, um, _unfortunate_ experiences with clones. You know, uh, _really_ traumatised him— Guess you gave him a scare, Jer-Bear. Poor kid.”

Jack is sobbing, and Jerry stares as he curls himself into a tight ball, hiding his face against the skinny planes of his knees, wishes he could _do_ something, wishes he could help—

“Now, uh, while Jack here is _on ice_ , lemme, um. Lemme explain to you what the deal is, okay?” His hand slides down Jerry’s side, fingers playing over his ribs and hips, and then he cups the curve of Jerry’s ass, making Jerry choke out an ugly sound. “My name is _the Grandmaster_ , and uh… Well. This is Sakaar.”

Feeling himself shake in his place, Jerry wishes he could pull himself away, wishes he could shove this _Grandmaster_ back, but he is frozen in his place, staring at Jack, feeling how his sharp screeches of pain rip right through him. He feels so sick with it, so incredibly sick with it—

But there’s no escape. There’s no waking up from this nightmare.

The Grandmaster talks, and talks, and talks, until Jack falls fitfully asleep in the grass, and Jerry doesn’t want to believe a word of it, but he has to. When the Grandmaster is finally done, Jerry scoops Jack right up off the ground, and he carries him into the quarters they’re all going to be sharing.

Sitting listlessly on two separate couches, two men are already waiting for them, and Jerry has to hiss at them to keep them from shocking Jack awake.  

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**HATCH HARRISON**

“Okay, last one,” Hatch whispers, and his body is _aching_. Below them, he can hear the torrent and shift of the water some ten or twenty feet down, and worse, he can hear the click and clack of the teeth of the eels in the water. He’d caught a glimpse of one, a few minutes ago – a horrible, eyeless thing with teeth as long and thick as nails, jagged and horrific where they sprout from their mouths.

Leaning back to back, they rest with their soles on the rim of the well, and Hatch stays in his place, breathing heavily.

“Okay, maybe if we just— Roll to the side?” Ricky asks, uncertainly, and Hatch nods before realising that, of course, Ricky can’t see that.

“Yeah. On three?”

“On three.” Hatch’s calming aura is at least mostly worn off by now, he thinks – Ricky isn’t quite as dopey as he had been, and after a count of three, they hurl themselves to the side. The problem with that, of course, is that Hatch is right-handed, and had assumed Ricky was too; evidently, Ricky had assumed the opposite.

Hatch feels himself fall down toward the rushing water, letting out a yell, but Ricky’s hand encloses tight around his wrist, and Hatch grips him back. With Ricky’s dominant hand – his left hand – he is clutching at the edge of the well, and he awkwardly swings his leg up to the edge too, clumsily trying to drag his weight over the edge of the well.

Hatch scrambles at the side of the well, letting Ricky pull him up, and he tumbles down onto the ground next to Ricky, breathing heavily. The two of them rest with their backs against the stone wall of the well, both of them exhausted, and Hatch feels the absolute _torture_ of his sore thighs and calves, of his aching shoulders, and next to him, he hears Ricky laugh.

“Don’t you laugh,” Hatch mutters. “You _idiot_. Why would you assume left?”

“I didn’t assume left. I assumed right – _my right!”_ Ricky laughs harder, tipping his head back against the wall and slapping his own thigh, and Hatch exhales, feeling the urge to laugh bubbling in the base of his throat. God. God. _Hatch_ is an idiot.

“You— This is nothing to laugh about. Flesh-eating eels, roiling waters, abduction across state lines—”

Ricky’s laugh becomes more high-pitched, and he slaps his thigh even harder, and Hatch feels himself crack. It starts off with a little chuckle, but then he’s laughing too, and the two of them are leaning shoulder-to-shoulder like old friends, laughing at fucking _nothing_ —

“Well!” comes the voice of their abductor from the side of the room, and the two of them look toward it… Hatch feels his mouth fall open, and he stares uncomprehendingly at the figure before them. He wears gaudy robes that seem to be some remnant of disco, but his face—

“You look just like me,” Hatch says, at the same time as Ricky says, “Did you make a mask of my face?”

They turn to look at each other, and immediately, they jump a foot apart. Fascinated, Hatch leans in toward Ricky, seeing his face for the first time in the dim light, and it’s the same as _Hatch’s_. They have different hair, sure – Hatch’s is black and thick and wavy, a little long on top, and Ricky has hair like a fucking Republican, brown and neatly combed with a damned _side parting_ , but… Their faces are exactly the same. _Exactly_.

Hatch thinks they even have the same damned tan.

“What?” Hatch asks, softly. “No more laughing at this?”

“I don’t laugh at myself in the mirror,” Ricky says. “Doesn’t seem much difference, except for that damned— What’s wrong with your _hair_? You look like a hippie.”

“Really?” Hatch demands, feeling the humour in his own voice threatening to break out of him. “You’re saying _my_ hair’s bad? You look like you’re running to be the next Tea Party senator to ruin the country.” Ricky laughs, exhaling breathlessly, and then he turns to the stranger. There’s a weird energy coming off the guy, an aura Hatch doesn’t know how to parse: it actually hurts to look at him directly, if he’s being cognizant of the guy’s energy, and that’s—

Well.

That’s a damned warning sign if ever there was one.

“You know, I am, uh, I am _so_ glad you two are getting along!” he says brightly, showing off his white teeth. “Let me, uh, walk you two to the, uh, _quarters_ , and I’ll tell ya, uh, what’s up, huh?” Hatch and Ricky look at each other, exchanging a glance, but again, Hatch feels a wave of that dangerous energy…

It’s not worth arguing. He needs to figure out exactly what they’re dealing with first. He needs to…

( _But what if he can’t? What if he can’t figure out what they’re dealing with here, and he can’t get home to Lindsey and Regina? What if—)_

“Okay,” Ricky says, and he stands up slowly, offering Hatch his hand. “Tell us _what’s up_.”

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**JACK HARRISON**

When Jack sees the windmill in the distance, he nearly starts crying.

He’s been walking for hours on end, so many hours that his skin is _burned_ from the sun, and that his tongue is dry and painful with thirst, but there is no shade out here on the wide, red-earthed plains, and he has nothing to drink, nothing to eat.

He just has to keep walking.

If he keeps walking, he’ll reach the edge of the spirit trap, and he’ll be able to reach Gil again, and then…

He’ll be free.

He’ll be okay.

Everything will be okay.

When Jack sees the windmill, then, he nearly starts crying – maybe he would have started crying, if there was any moisture left in his body. His legs are _aching_ , his skin peeling on his arms and on the back of his neck, and the soles of his feet may just be permanently damaged – he definitely has blisters, definitely…

He is terrified, for a few minutes, that the red windmill is a mirage.

Silhouetted against the lilac sky, the windmill seems too difficult to believe, built as it is of neat red brick, and with white cloth sails that turn in slow, easy circles as a breeze Jack can’t feel catches them. But it is a windmill. It _is_ real, he knows, as he comes closer, because he walks on dewy grass instead of red earth, and he lets out a ragged whimper of noise as he falls to his knees.

His legs just buckle, and he falls…

But he has to keep moving.

Crawling forward on his elbows and his knees, he knows that if he can only make it, he’ll be able to knock on the door, and then, somehow, _somehow_ , Gil will hear him. Gil will come for him. Jack has saved Gil so many times, and this time, Gil will save him – Gil will carry him home, and Jack will never say a dreadful thing to him again, will never snap at him for being ridiculous again.

Jack will make the damned pancakes he loves, with smiley faces drawn on in chocolate sauce. Whatever Gil wants.

Because everything is going to be okay, and Jack is going to get home.

On the white doorstep of the red windmill, Jack heaves in a breath, and he hits his fist hard against the wood, as hard as he can. The knock is soft and quiet to his own ears, but it’s still heard, and Jack whimpers as the door opens, and he looks up—

It isn’t Gil.

Jack sees a pale man with long, dark hair; the man is wearing tight riding breeches and a loose, laced blouse, and he stares down at Jack, his expression stricken. “Please,” Jack chokes out, and he feels his heavy head touch down against the stone. “Please…”

“It’s alright,” the man says softly, and he drops to his knees beside Jack. “It’s alright. He oughtn’t have— _Norns_. It’s alright, let me heal you… Sleep. _Sleep_.” Jack tries to resist, tries to stay awake – he needs to call for Gil, needs to rip himself out of the spirit trap, needs to get away…

But a thick darkness slides over him, weighting down his eyelids, and he falls flat on the ground before the stranger.

When he wakes up, hours later, it is tucked up in a bed with the stranger watching over him, his expression pinched. “I promised I would explain to you,” he says quietly, his chin upon his hands, “the precise nature of your abduction.”

“Abduction?” Jack repeats, softly.

“Yes,” the stranger says. “My name is Loki: I won’t harm you, Jack. I’ve healed you of your burns from the desert, but you will yet be fatigued for some days. How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Jack says. “Where’s Gil?”

“Gil,” Loki repeats, softly. “Gil is some ways away, child. I’m sorry.” Jack lies back in the bed and he stares at the ceiling as Loki talks, as he explains what exactly is going on, what exactly Jack’s been torn from his home for…

He wants Gil.

He just wants to go home.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**DOCTOR CHARLES BRODY**

“How do we get out of this?” Charles asks, when they get to the top of the well. The water is shifting below them, and Charles can feel the cool that comes off it, cooler than the balmy warmth of the room and his sweaty hands, his sweaty— He feels like he might drop dead at any moment, because his whole body is _hurting_ , and his legs feel like they may just buckle.

“We’re gonna roll to the left side,” Zach says quietly, his voice quietly authoritative. “My left, your right. This side.” Zach squeezes Charles’ right hand, and Charles exhales, nodding hurriedly. “Okay, ready? One, two, three—”

They roll, and they land hard on the concrete floor. Zach rolls gracefully, seeming to go into it naturally.

Of course he would – he’s a cop, right? A cop.

Okay.

Charles leans back, rubbing his arm and doing his best to soothe the bruise he’s sure he’s going to have – Carolyn always fusses over him, when he has bruises, always works some cream right into them, and he aches to be home with her. Hopefully, this is the only horrible thing this guy wanted them to do, and they’ll be set free after this, that they’ll be able to go—

“Uh, _bad news_ , fellas,” the guy says as he comes in, and Charles stares at him, taking him in. His face is— “Yeah, yeah, my face, it’s the same as your faces, I know, I know! It’s weird! Now, my name is, uh, the Grandmaster.”

“The Grandmaster,” Zach repeats snidely. “That’s a modest title.”

“Mmm, I’d, uh, I’d be a little careful with the _sass_ there, honey. See, uh— There’s been a little… Okay, I may have miscounted. You know what they say about Elders and math – you know, after a billion years, the numbers just start all looking the same…” He trails off, sliding forward, and Charles stares at this _Grandmaster’s_ face, taking it in, taking in his casual humour, his easy _charm_.

“Listen,” Charles says, squaring his shoulders. “You can’t just— You can’t just _do_ this, kidnapping us! This is an _international crime_ , assuming that one of us has been transported over the border, and—”

“Little mix-up,” the Grandmaster continues in an apologetic tone. “See, I— Golly, it’s just _silly_. So I got you two in here, and I have six guys already, ha, _locked in_ , so to speak. You know, they’re all picking their bunks out and everything! But the thing is, Jack Harrison, he— I mean, he landed on my cute little hubby’s doorstep, and once Lo-Lo sets his heart on somebody, well, there’s just no prying him off. But the B-Team, that’s gotta be… That’s gotta be _eight people_. And with you two— That makes nine.”

“So?” Zach presses. “You’re going to release one of us?”

“Uh, yeah,” the Grandmaster says, beaming. “From… From life. Golly, how… How do I choose? Eenie-meenie meiny-moe on who to kill?”

“No!” Charles says, running forward. “You can’t just… Just _kill_ one of us! Let us go, let us all go!” The Grandmaster puts a finger on the stripe on his chin, looking thoughtful for a long moment, tilting his head from the left to the right as he seems to consider what Charles has said.

“Mmm,” he hums, and then shakes his head. “Nah. No, no, I— I think I’ll kill one of you. Any votes for who goes out?”

“No!” Charles says. “No, don’t kill _either_ of us—”

“Mmm… I think it’s you,” the Grandmaster says, and Charles is aware of a sudden snap – a sound that cracks loud in his ears, louder than anything he’s ever, ever heard… And then blackness.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**DETECTIVE ZACH NICHOLS**

It’s some sort of power play. That, Zach is most certainly aware of – murdering Charles Brody is absolutely something this Grandmaster is doing simply to prove that he will kill one of them, that he will just murder somebody simply for the sake of numbers. Zach watches at the way Charles’ neck snaps hard to the left side, without the Grandmaster even touching him, and at the way Charles crumples to the ground.

“That a lab coat?” Zach asks, impassively. He won’t give this guy the satisfaction of freaking out or showing some fake surprise and fear, but the Grandmaster doesn’t seem surprised by that: he grins, showing his teeth.

“Uh, yeah, he was— He was a _professor_. He cured the allergy for dogs on _his_ Earth, I— I think.” His Earth.

Interesting.

“Noble cause,” Zach says, and he slides his hands into his pockets, meeting the Grandmaster’s gaze. This is a dream, Zach is relatively certain – it’s a little complex for the average dream, seems to have a lot to deal with within it, but… Hey. Dreams are weird sometimes.

You just have to role with it.

And Charles Brody?

Christ, he’d been irritating. Whining the whole damned time about his _wife_ and his _son_ and his _dog_ , and about his legs hurting, and about not being able to swim— Yeah. Better him than Zach.

“Eight of us, huh,” Zach says, arching his eyebrows. “We all have the same face?”

“Uh huh.”

“That’s pretty weird,” Zach muses. “You a narcissist?”

“My, uh, my lover tells me so,” the Grandmaster purrs, and Zach arches an eyebrow at the lascivious thrum to his tone… And then takes a slow step forward. “Can I, uh, can I explain to you the deal here, Zach, honey? I’d, uh… I’d sure like to lay out the basic schematics.”

“Sure,” Zach says casually. “Go ahead.”

The Grandmaster beams, and the two of them walk from the room, their steps neatly synchronized.

Zach doesn’t glance back at the corpse on the ground. He knows what dead bodies look like – there’s no point in lingering. And in the scheme of things, this _B-Team_ , well— Sounds like it needs leadership.

And God knows Brody was dead weight before he even hit the ground.


	3. Chapter One

**JACK HARRISON**

Jack is reclining on a bed in a decently big room, laid up like a cell. The bed he’s one is broad, with a soft mattress, and it’s maybe queen-sized, pressed up against one corner of the room; to his left, in the other corner, with a four-foot gap between the beds, there is another bed. Loki is sitting on the edge of the bed, blocking Jack’s view of the figure lying in it, and he’s speaking quietly, quietly enough that Jack can’t really make out the words.

At the foot of each of the beds, there are dressers with a lot of drawers in them, and there’s a wide window on the wall between the beds, closest to Jack’s head: he’s at the wrong angle to see out of it, but he can see the door across the room.

He’d fallen asleep, he thinks, for a little while, after Loki was done speaking with him, after he’d explained… But the other guy, the guy in the other bed, had been all but _wailing_ when Jack had woken up again, had been sobbing and crying and clutching at Loki’s body, and Loki had just let him, had held him very tightly and cupped the back of his head.

Jack’s head… Hurts.

It isn’t a desperate pain, like it had been before, but he feels like there’s a gap in the side of his head, like something ineffable, something unexplainable, is missing from him, leaving a vague ache that he doesn’t think he could describe, if he wanted to. Gil would be able to describe it – Gil can always describe the indescribable.

No Gil here.

“Can I go?” Jack asks, interrupting, and Loki glances back from the bed.

“Jack,” he says softly. “My apologies, I didn’t realize you were awake: I’ve laid some clothes for you on the chest of drawers. Yes, if you feel well enough, you’re free to stand and go out into the main quarters. Would you ask Jeremiah to come in here, please?”

“Thanks,” Jack murmurs, and he stands, taking up the clothes and looking at them curiously – they’re not Earth clothes, that’s for sure. His head is spinning slightly from standing, and he tries not to focus on that, tries to focus on what Loki had said. His head feels _empty,_ and… And slow. “And yeah, yeah, I can do that. Jeremiah.” There’s a loose tunic made of a soft, green fleece, the sleeves elbow-length, and with a hood on the back; then there are cream-coloured leggings, he supposes to be worn underneath. He pulls them on, nonetheless, feeling the surprising comfort of the tunic on his body, and then dragging on the leggings – they’re tight, but the fabric if supple and soft, and he’s surprised by how comfortable they are as he pulls on a pair of leather ankle boots.

He must look like a medieval reenactor.

Glancing back to Loki, he catches a glimpse of the guy on the bed with him, and he feels his breath catch in his throat. Loki had explained it to him, _explained_ that they all had the same face, and to brace himself, but… This guy is younger than Jack, Jack thinks – he looks _really_ young, only just into his twenties, at a guess, and his brown eyes are wide and wet, his cheeks tear-streaked. Even though he’d stopped with the yelling a few minutes ago, he’s still trembling visibly, and when his gaze flits toward Jack, he flinches visibly, as if Jack had just hit him.

And the face is—

The same. Same chin, jaw, nose, same— Same everything.

Feeling a little sick, Jack takes a stumbling step back toward the door, and he drags it open. He’s in a corridor, and there are other doors in it, mostly identical, but he walks toward the open archway at one end, and he comes out in a wide, two-tiered room. There are no windows, but there’s another door to his right, that presumably leads somewhere else. On the upper level, there’s a few empty bookshelves and some assorted wooden chairs and stools; on the lower level, down a few steps, there’s a big rug spread over the floor, and around the edges of the room are plush, comfortable-looking couches and armchairs. It’s down here, on the lower level, that everybody is.

Jack stands on the stair, his jaw slightly open, as he stares at the other six guys in the room. They’re different ages, all wearing different clothes, and some of them are a little heavier or a little more muscular than others, but they’re—

Jack swallows, hard. He’s seen a lot of weird shit in his life, that much is true, but this isn’t Lady Dracula or Doctor Frankenstein; this isn’t the Big Foot wedding, or the Mothman creche; this isn’t aliens, or— This is something _else_.

“Um, he asked for, um. J— For Jeremiah, he asked for Jeremiah.”

One of the oldest guys, who’d been hunched over in the corner, his fingers steepled in front of his mouth, immediately stands to his feet. He’s wearing suit pants and an untucked, grey shirt, a few of the buttons open and showing the t-shirt he’s wearing underneath; he wears smart shoes, shiny black leather.

“Thanks,” Jeremiah says, and one of his hands touches Jack’s shoulder, warm even through the fleece of the hooded tunic. “Sit down, kid.” It’s an order, an imperative, and usually, Jack wouldn’t take well to being told what to do by a stranger, but—

Jack takes the rest of the steps down, and he sinks slowly into an armchair, immediately kicking the leather boots off and curling his feet beneath him. Everyone sits in silence, and he looks between them, taking them in. There’s two middle-aged guys who’re sat together, one in a grey suit and the other dressed in jeans and a black knit sweater; there’s a guy with glasses in a collared shirt who’s leaning back at his chair, and sitting with his elbows on his knees at the guy’s feet is a younger guy who Jack’d guess is his age, his hair very obviously the victim of vigorous machine drying. He’s in some loose, comfortable looking sweater, and he barely seems cognizant of the fact that Jack is in the room, his gaze very far away.

And the other guy…

He’s the only guy in the room that doesn’t look some kind of terrified.

Leaning back in a winged armchair, one ankle loosely settled on his knee, his body language is open and comfortable, all but radiating confidence, and his expression is focused on Jack. Curiosity shows in his dark eyes, and he’s studying Jack the same way Jack’s studying him; as he takes in Jack’s clothes, Jack takes in the leather jacket he wears, the grey v-neck, the tight pants. He’s older, the same age as Jeremiah, or older, maybe in his forties or his fifties… His hair is light brown, and unlike Jeremiah’s hair, which was just a mess on top of his head, he seems to style his, and it’s carefully combed, carefully parted.

“You a cop?” Jack asks.

The guy grins, showing his teeth, and Jack— It’s _his_ face. Jack knows that it’s his face. But he doesn’t think he’s grinned like that in his whole life, with so much breezy confidence, with such a crinkling at the edges of his eyes, not even when he hadn’t been abducted to an alien planet and thrown into a room of doubles.

“I’m a detective,” the guy replies. “Reporter?”

“How’d you know I’m a reporter?” Jack asks, feeling himself smile slightly despite himself.

“You haven’t got the stance for a detective or a cop,” the guy says mildly, his tone friendly, warm. “But you’re attentive, looking for the little details. Reporter makes sense. Besides, there’s three reporters here, and the other two are Michael here,” he gestures to the guy on the floor, who glances up at Jack, but says nothing, “and Jerry. It was a fifty-fifty that you were the third one.”

“The other guy,” Jack says. “The young guy in the bed. What’s wrong with him? He was— He was screaming.”

“He’s scared,” says the guy sat beside Michael, his tone reasonable. “Aren’t you?”

“Not that scared,” Jack says, trying to think of how to explain. Again, there’s that weird stopper in his own head, the oddity of it, like… Like… _something_. Like something’s different. Wrong. “He was— When he looked at me, he jumped, jolted. Like he’d seen a clone before. Like he knew to be scared of them.”

“We’ll find out soon,” the first guy says, and then he leans forward in his seat, putting out his right hand. He doesn’t wear any rings, but he wears a nice watch. He’s trying, Jack notes distantly, to distract Jack, to make sure he doesn’t panic anybody by speculating… He’s probably right to do that. “I’m Zach. Zach Nichols.”

“Jack Harrison,” Jack replies, shaking the hand. Zach’s handshake is firm, but he doesn’t squeeze too tightly, doesn’t try to make a thing about breaking Jack’s fingers or trying to show off his dominance. “And— And you are?”

“Donald Ripley,” the other younger guy says, and he shakes Jack’s hand. “I’m a science teacher.”

“Michael Gold,” says the guy on the floor, but he doesn’t reach for Jack’s hand, and Jack doesn’t offer his to try to force it. Michael does look up from the rug, though, and he takes Jack in, examining him from behind the bottle-glass thick lenses of his glasses.

“I’m Ricky,” says the guy in the suit. “And that’s Hatch.”

“He’s a TV exec, like Jerry,” Hatch supplies. “Except for bullshit teleshopping instead of news.” Ricky sniggers, shoving Hatch in the side of the head.

“And _Hatch_ sells antiques. Really doing favours to society, this guy. His last name is Harrison too.” Jack looks between Ricky and Hatch, who sit shoulder to shoulder in separate chairs, their knees spread at the same angle, even their elbows rested in parallel to one another.

“Do you guys know each other?” Jack asks, and Ricky and Hatch share a glance before Hatch releases a sheepish sound, drawing his hand through his thick, tightly-curled hair. He wears it long at the back, down to his neck, but it actually looks pretty good; Ricky’s hair is more like Zach’s. Straight, brown, and neatly-combed.

“Not until today,” he admits. “The— This,” he says, gesturing between him and Ricky with two fingers, “It’s just a temporary psychic link – it’s my bad, I kinda threw my weight around earlier trying to keep him calm. It’ll wear off. But, you know, you know what it’s like. These things happen.” Jack doesn’t know what it’s like, and he looks between the other guys to see if they show any sign of recognition, but Zach and Michael look blank and vaguely confused; Donald looks curious, but not like he already knows.

Hatch and Ricky are staring at Jack as if he _should_ know, and Jack opens his mouth to ask, but before he can, Michael speaks up.  

“Are you— Why are you dressed like that? You’re from Earth, right?” Zach arches an eyebrow, but he seems like he approves of the question, and his lip quirks up slightly on the left side, showing the slightest bit of a smirk.

“Yeah,” Jack says, in a way that hopefully doesn’t let on that he’s used to being asked that question. “These are the clothes Loki gave me, um— I was in my shorts and t-shirt, I’d been taken right out of bed… Woke up in the middle of the desert, and kinda just had to walk all day. Thought I was gonna die, but I landed on his doorstep, and he, um— He said the Grandmaster, this Grandmaster guy who brought us here, who’s got the same face as us, that he must have thought it would be funny, to put me out there. I was really sunburned, and peeling, but… But he fixed that, I think.”

“This Loki guy… We saw him come through, earlier.” Donald asks, slowly. “Who is he, to the Grandmaster? His— His consort? Husband?” Jack stares at Donald for a few seconds, glancing back toward the corridor he’d come in from the upper level, and then he nods his head.

“Yeah,” he says. “He said consort. There’s no ring on his finger, but, you know. He’s got a piercing through his lip, a little ring; another one on his ear, here… And another one through his tongue, I think. A bar piercing.” Michael leans back on the rug, looking up at Donald, and Donald slowly nods his head. “I don’t know if people wear those to be married. Maybe aliens do.”

“What is it?” Zach asks, leaning forward. Donald has an odd look on his face, but Michael speaks up before he does.

“Out in the city,” Michael says, “We saw a… Like a church, or a temple? It had a big effigy in stained glass, of the Grandmaster like you described him: like us, but with grey hair, and with a stripe down his chin. Next to him, there was another figure, who looked like you just described Loki.”

“They looked like objects of worship,” Donald says quietly. “Or of… Of history, maybe, but they had golden discs around their chests, like halos in Christian art, and they were the only icons portrayed. And the priest that stopped to talk to us, Riyat, he looked at us… You know, not just with recognition, but with caution, like a priest looking at something holy.”

“He did this,” Michael says, and he draws his thumb from his lower lip down the length of his chin in a clean, swift motion, dragging the back of his knuckle over the flesh.

“That’s kinda like when Catholics cross themselves,” Ricky says, and Donald nods his head.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought when I saw it, too,” Donald says.

“En Dwi and I are worshiped as gods in the city proper,” says the quiet, clipped voice of Loki, and Jack turns to look at him as he slowly exits the corridor the bedrooms are down, looking between each of them. Donald and Michael are both staring at Loki, taking him in with slack jaws, and Loki gracefully walks to the edge of the upper level, hovering on the stair. “En Dwi founded this planet, Sakaar, some twenty millennia ago.”

“And you’re his husband?” Zach asks, slowly. Loki inclines his head, the motion delicate and genteel, like a little bow. “What’s all this, then? His anniversary present?”

“You met him, Zachary,” Loki says, spreading his pale hands before him: on his fingers, he wears a few silver rings, and shining silver bracelets clink and shine on his wrists. “Do you truly think _me_ the architect of this bacchanal?” Zach’s eyebrow raise, and he looks Loki up and down lasciviously, from the long hem of his green robes to the severe cut of his low-hemmed neckline, where white skin is bared to the air.

“Bacchanal, huh?” he asks. “That a threat, or a promise?” Loki laughs, showing his teeth, and his blue eyes glint with mischief – he doesn’t seem at all uncomfortable with the flirtation, and actually seems _pleased_ with it. “Is he okay? The kid?”

“He…” Loki hesitates for a moment, and then shrugs his shoulders: the movement makes his full skirts shift and swing slightly around his feet. “He will be well, given time. Your meals will be coming soon – my apologies for the lateness of the hour, I’m sure you must each be ravenous – but Jeremiah and Jack will likely eat in their room. Jack will need some time to accustom to your faces. I will allow him or Jeremiah to explain his particular aversion as they choose.”

“His name is Jack too?” Jack asks, slowly, and somehow, that makes something pang in his chest, momentarily distracting him from the dull ache in his head. Loki tilts his head slightly, looking at Jack with a sort of softness in his face, his lips slightly parted, and he exhales, drawing a lock of shining black hair from his face.

“I believe it says John on his birth certificate,” Loki murmurs, “but to my awareness, he’s only ever gone by Jack. His surname is Bellicec, however, and certainly, that’s dissimilar enough from Harrison; you might also make use of the senior and junior labels, if you are worried as to confusion. If it is any consolation, the A-Team has two Davids.”

“The A-Team,” Zach repeats. “What’s that?”

“This is—” Loki begins, glancing between them all with his eyebrows raised, his expression surprised, and then he amends it to, “What has the Grandmaster told you?”

“That we’re doubles of each other,” Hatch says. “That he’s— Kinda just kidnapped us all to see how we respond to each other. To see what happens. That there’ll be…” Hatch trails off, wrinkling his nose slightly, and Ricky continues as if he’d started the sentence himself.

“… challenges. Games, he called them, mazes. Stuff like that. Mostly it seems like he’s kidnapped us so that he can torture us at his leisure. Sound right?”

“Yes,” Loki says. “Effectively.” There’s no flinch in his voice, and there’s no sign of a tremor or any nerves; Jack doesn’t see a sign of guilt, either, and that makes him feel slightly… Uncertain. “But, moreover… You are the secondary group in rotation, the B-Team. The A-Team comprises of another eight individuals, also doubles of En Dwi.”

“We know any of them?” Zach asks, dryly. Loki’s lips quirk up at their edges.

“Not that I know of,” Loki murmurs, and at a knock on the door, he moves toward it, opening it wider and allowing in the two people outside. Jack looks at them, taking the both of them as they come inside; one looks like an Andorian on _Star Trek_ , and the other is almost human-looking, but with three eyes instead of two, and with different-shaped hands. Michael immediately sits back on his ass, leaning back next to Donald as the two guys, wearing matching tunics, bring down some trays of food and set them down: legs flick out from the base of the trays, and leave them as tables with several plates of food…

Most of it looks familiar.

He sees rice mixed with seaweed and peas; he sees some fruits piled up in a bowl; some strips of what looks like chicken; a lasagne; a jug of what looks like orange juice… Jack doesn’t feel hungry, but he can see the others shift slightly, see them look eagerly at the steaming plates.

Loki touches the Andorian’s fingers for a few moments, and he immediately takes up two plates, balancing them on one strong arm as he moves off down the corridor and into the bedroom Jack and Jack had been in – they communicated, somehow, just with a touch. More telepathy. Psychics…

“What do you think of all this?” Zach asks, even as Ricky and Hatch lean forward, beginning to cautiously pick some of the stuff and put it onto plates. His gaze is right on Loki, and Jack remains in his place, looking between them. Loki’s expression remains unchanging, a slight smile on his face, his eyes still.

“When this is over,” Loki says, “you will each be rewarded; compensated, for your time and your trouble.”

“That his prerogative, or yours?”

“Does it matter?”

“I don’t feel like it’s his.”

“Perhaps not.”

“So why do you care?”

“Is caring a crime, Zachary?”

“It just seems out of place, that’s all.”

“Perhaps I’m out of place.”

“Maybe you are.” Zach and Loki throw the lines between them like a tennis volley, but neither of them seems to be growing frustrated or annoyed: Zach, if anything, seems satisfied and content, and Loki… Loki doesn’t seem to be worried. Loki seems pleased, too, and he gives Zach an appraising look before Zach turns toward the food.

Loki takes a few steps down, and he looks at Jack.

“I didn’t think,” Loki says softly. “About your clothes – my apologies. I can change them for you now, if you wish, to something more appropriate to Earth.” He looks genuinely apologetic, and looking at the expression on his face, Jack can see that he’s tired, or maybe just stressed. Is he in the same position, Jack wonders, as the rest of them? Does the Grandmaster treat him well? How could a kind man be okay with all of this?

Maybe he isn’t kind. Maybe it’s an act, but—

He _feels_ kind. Jack doesn’t know how he knows, but he does feel kind, like… Like an energy, or something. The kindness feels genuine, and Jack doesn’t want to put more pressure on him to go and find extra clothes.

“Oh, no,” Jack says, shaking his head. “No, no, they’re, um, they’re okay, thank you, I swear.”

“En Dwi will give you your own clothes tomorrow morning, once you’ve decided amongst yourselves which quarters you’ll each take,” Loki says quietly, and he draws a hand through his hair, which isn’t all black, like Donald and Michael had described it being in the image out in the city, but is turning silver in places. Jack saw an ore vein a while back, while he and Gil were doing a story on dwarfish miners in Canada, and the silver had come through the black stone just like that, shining in the light. It doesn’t look human, the colour of the silver in his hair. It looks _shiny_ , and it glitters, like silver itself. “Tell them they can select their own rooms, but once you choose your formation, En Dwi is going to put labels on the doors.”

“Okay,” Jack says, and then he adds, “Thanks, again. For— For bringing me back here.” Loki looks at him, expression frozen for a long moment, and then he takes a step back.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he says, and he ascends the steps, moving toward the main door and moving out into the corridor, flanked by the two servants. When he’s gone, Jack turns to look at the others.

“Did you hear that?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Donald says, and he puts a piece of chicken in his mouth, chewing it quickly before he swallows. “You should eat something, Jack.”

“I’m not hungry,” Jack murmurs.

“Eat something anyway,” Zach instructs, and Jack hesitates, but then Zach gives him a stern look, and reluctantly, Jack moves forward, dragging his chair a little closer and beginning to eat something that looks like lamb, and is cooked in an orange sauce. It’s chewy and a little sweet, and as soon as he tastes it on his tongue, he feels his whole body _relax_. He eats like something wild, hurriedly putting pieces of lamb into his mouth, and Zach’s lips twitch. “Told you.”

“You want to room together?” Ricky asks.

“Sounds good,” Hatch says. Jack glances between the other three guys, uncertain, and Zach stands up from the table, touching his fingers to Jack’s shoulder as he moves past. He walks with his hips out, his shoulders back – he walks like a cop. It makes Jack smile, and he watches as Zach move into the other room. He hears Zach speak quietly, and then lean back into the corridor.

“Mikey, kiddo,” he says. “You okay to room with Jack here?” Michael swells up slightly from his place on the ground, his chin rising, his lips parting.

“Yeah,” Michael says. “Sure.”

“Okay,” Zach says. “And Don, Jack, do you want to room together, or…?”

“That’s okay with me,” Donald says, glancing to Jack, and Jack nods his head in assent.

“So that leaves me and you, Jerry,” he hears Zach say. Jack looks back to the lamb, and eats with a bit more vigour.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**JERRY BARNES**

Jerry takes Jack directly into one of the bedrooms, when he comes in. He lays the young man gently on one of the beds, carefully unlacing his shoes and putting them aside, and he hesitates for a few moments, unsure if he should try to wake him up, but— The way he’d screamed, the way he’d jumped and jolted and looked so…

Jerry stares down at the young man, and his breath hitches in his throat as he runs his hand through his hair, and then he takes a slow step back. Better that he’s in here, that he sleeps for a while, and come out then…

Better that he sleep as much as he need to, and doesn’t wake up to Jerry, just in case he reacts like that again.

Exhaling slowly, Jerry steps out of the room, and he makes his way into the main room, glancing around at the upper and lower levels of the big, high-ceilinged room. It’s warm and comfortable, but there are no windows… Despite that, the room has a cheerful quality to it, comfortable and well-lit, and Jerry takes a slow step down to the lower part of the room, where the two younger men are sitting…

Younger than Jerry. One in his twenties or thirties; the other a little bit older.

“You’re dressed for the eighties,” he says to the younger one, who slides to sit cross-legged on the floor, opening up the other couch for Jerry.

“It is the eighties,” he replies. “Where I come from.”

“Oh,” Jerry says, and he turns back toward the door, looking at the archway that leads in toward the bedrooms. Is Jack, then, from a different era, too? Is he— “You, are you— It’s 2011, for me.”

The older one whistles, pushing his glasses up onto his head, and he stares at Jerry, his expression thoughtful. “I’m, uh, ’97. He’s from ’83. What’s your name?”

“Jerry,” he says, and then he exhales, running his hand through his hair and shaking his head. “Your names?”

“I’m Donald,” the older one says, and he kicks the younger one slightly in the side of the hip, making his lip twitch. “This is Michael.”

“You talk much, Michael?” Jerry asks.

“More than I should, my mom always said,” Michael says. Jerry leans back, just slightly, and then he sinks into a chair, pressing his head back and reaching up to rub at his temples, his fingers running in slow, near-painful circles. “Is he, um— Is he okay? The young guy?”

“His name is Jack Bellicec,” Jerry says quietly. “He’s— He’s sleeping, for now.” Jerry’s eyes close tightly, and mercifully, the door opens, letting in two more guys… Jerry gives his name, speaks shortly and a little tersely as the two of them come in, introduces himself when they give their names… But all he thinks about is Jack.

Jack, _screaming_ , the sound ripping raggedly out of his mouth, and scrambling back like a mad thing— He inhales as another guy enters, and this one saunters into the room, his thumbs looped in his skinny pants… This guy isn’t like the others. He isn’t from the eighties or the nineties – this guy, him and Jerry are from the same era.

Immediately, his eye goes to Jerry.

He tilts his chin up, and he gives Jerry a look, as if to say, “You okay?” Jerry clocks it in the movement of his head, in the way he walks – cop.

“You’re the reporter,” he says, slowly. “Network exec, Jerry Barnes, right? You… Donald Ripley, high school science teacher, mean right hook; Michael Gold… You went to UoM, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Michael says, nodding.

“Jack Bellicec – that’s your boy in the other room… And we’re waiting on Jack Harrison. Bellicec, he’s a poet; Jack, he’s a journalist, too, like you two, Jerry, Michael. And you two… Ricky Hayman, Hatch Harrison. Is it true you’re a telepath?”

“No,” Hatch says, shaking his head. “I’m just a minor psychic, that’s all – I do stuff with, uh, with empathy. Push thoughts, push feelings – some aura readings, and a little future sight. I can’t read people’s thoughts. Well. Except his, right now.” Hatch says, nodding to Ricky.

“Psychic push,” Ricky says, shrugging. “Temporary telepathic link.”

“You know what that means?” the guy asks Ricky, his tone a little snide, and Ricky beams.

“No,” Ricky says. “But he does.” Hatch sniggers, and Jerry feels a little of the tension momentarily unbundle in his chest, to see them laughing together… These guys seem good, all told. None of them seems nasty, or—

Well. This guy, Jerry knows right away not to trust off the bat, but then, Jerry’s never liked cops.

Cops have never liked him.

“How’d you know all that?” Jerry asks. “Our names?”

“The Grandmaster told me,” the cop says.

“What, you were just chatting to him?” Donald asks, slowly. “The guy with the blue stripe on his chin?”

“He just killed a guy in front of me,” the cop says, slowly. “Broke his neck and threw him down a well.” There’s a hitch in his throat, like his voice breaks in the middle – it’s fake as all Hell, but the younger men all seem to eat it up. The cop looks at Jerry, meets his gaze. _Can you believe they bought that?_ Jerry almost hears him say, even though his lips don’t move, and his gaze stays steady.

“The kid I carried in here,” Jerry says, nodding toward the arch leading into the bedrooms. “He was screaming before he passed out. Screaming. Crying. Dropped into a dead faint. He’s dangerous, the Grandmaster.”

“He’s a monster,” the guy says, in the tone of somebody recognising one of their own. Jerry glances toward the other guys, but none of them seems to clock it, not even Hatch and Ricky. It’s comforting to know the aura-reading is as much hooey as it sounds.

“Sit next to me,” Jerry says, and the cop smiles at him, understanding showing in his eyes as he puts out his hand. Jerry shakes it: the cop’s hand is warm, but his palm is dry. Good hands – strong hands.

“My name’s Zach,” he says. “What’s yours?”

“Jerry,” he replies. “My name’s Jerry.”

“Good man,” Zach says.

“Are you?” Zach laughs, and Jerry grins too, leaning back and letting Zach drop down in the seat beside him, casually leaning back in the chair like he owns the place, like it’s easy— The door opens, and just like Jerry had walked in with Jack in his arms, there’s another man, a stranger, a guy without their faces.

He’s got black hair with traces of silver, and he has rings and pieces of jewellery in his lip and through his ear, wearing flowing, green... What, a robe? A tunic? He barely looks at any of them, and he moves right past them all: the door to the first bedroom opens with a quiet click, although the guy keeps his arms around the young man.

“He’ll wake Jack up,” Jerry says.

“No, he won’t,” Zach says. “Did you hear his boots on the ground? I didn’t.” Jerry hesitates, frowning, but he hadn’t heard the guy’s shoes on the ground, even on the wood flooring of the upper level of the room. Like a damned _cat_. They sit in silence for ten minutes or so, and then, there’s a scream Jerry’s heard before from the corridor, and he leaps to his feet, but Zach grabs him by the wrist before he can step forward.

Jerry sinks rapidly down again, and he sits with his hands in front of his face, his fingers against his lips— Christ, the way he screams, it’s absolute terror… And then it quietens down, and Jerry exhales slowly.

When the young man comes in – Jack Harrison, Zach had supplied, hadn’t he? – and says, “Jeremiah?”, he doesn’t even think about it. He doesn’t even consider the fact that he hasn’t been called Jeremiah since he was twenty-five years old, doesn’t even think about it – he all but runs across the room, and he scrambles into the room, freezing when he sees Jack on the bed, taking his breaths in, slow and measured.

Slow.

He’s counting them.

“Don’t look directly at him,” the stranger says in a gentle voice, and Jerry looks at his marble-white fingers as he curls them through Jack’s hair, and Jack’s eyelids flutter shut as he leans slightly into the touch. Kid’s positively touch-starved, Jerry would guess. “Jeremiah, if you would, on the edge of the bed. Just next to his feet.” Jerry creeps forward slowly, and he sinks down into the seat, folding his hands in his lap. “Look at him slowly. Don’t look him in the eyes just yet, Jack, look at the shape of his mouth, at the stubble on his face. Look at the depth of his dimples, and the lines around his eyes…”

“Look at how much my hairline is receding,” Jerry advises, and Jack’s face, which is pale and slightly pasty, shifts as he lets out a breathless laugh.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” the other man says diplomatically, and Jerry winks at him.

“Sure you weren’t.”

“The colour of your hair,” Jack says, his voice a little hoarse, choked. He’s taking quick, fleeing glasses at Jerry’s face before looking back down toward his chest, but it’s something. “It’s light— It’s lighter than mine. And thinner.”

“A lot thinner,” Jerry says. “I’m an old man.”

“You’re not an old man,” Jack says immediately, and he does meet Jerry’s eyes this time. Jerry smiles at him, trying to put as much warmth into the expression as he can, and Jack shakily returns it before looking at Jerry’s chest again.

“I’m fatter than you are,” Jerry says, and Jack laughs properly, this time, putting his head in his hands. The other man nods, slowly, a slight smile on his face, and he puts his hand out toward Jerry, the back of his hand up toward the ceiling. It isn’t the movement of somebody expecting a handshake – consort, they’d called him. The Grandmaster’s consort.

Jerry takes up Loki’s hand with the back of his own, and he leans in, drawing his lips over Loki’s skin. It’s freezing, to the touch, so cold Jerry doesn’t know what to do with it… He’s like _marble_. The flesh is hard, too – hard, and cold, but Loki’s touch is gentle.

“My name is Loki,” he says, and he meets Jerry’s eyes with a vague fire in them. It’s— God, it’s something. He’s a pretty thing, and as much as he’s middle-aged, he gives off a youthful energy that’s _thick_ with sexuality, and Jerry has to wonder why exactly this is being aimed at _him_.

“Jerry,” he says. “Don’t call me Jeremiah.”

“Don’t give me orders,” Loki murmurs. “Not unless you wish to get somewhere.” Jerry laughs, and he draws his hand back, leaning away slightly, and Loki returns the smile.

“Aren’t you married?” Jack asks, peeking at Jerry from between his fingers.

“No,” Jerry says. “I’m not proposing – I’m kissing his hand. It’s polite.”

“More than,” Loki murmurs approvingly, and he leans in, drawing Jack’s head toward him. He kisses the top of Jack’s head, and Jack inhales, leaning right into the touch and letting Loki hold him. It’s— Jerry wishes he could find it cute, but it’s a little sad, in all honesty. He’s so eager for it. “Are you going to be alright, Jack?”

“Uh huh,” Jack whispers. “I’m sorry, um, about… I didn’t… It’s—”

“It’s alright,” Loki murmurs, his mouth against the top of Jack’s ear, his breath making the boy’s hair shift. It’s effortlessly paternal, and Jerry wonders if he has children himself… But that means the Grandmaster has children. What a horrifying thought.

“I’m okay,” Jack says. “With Jerry— Not with the others, not… I don’t think that I can.”

“That’s okay, Jack,” Jerry says. “You can, uh, you can leave him with me.”

“I know,” Loki murmurs, and he runs his fingers through Jack’s hair one more time as he draws himself up from the bed, adjusting his skirts. “Call on me, if you have need of me, Jack. Whenever.”

“How?”

“I’ll hear you,” Loki says. “Just say my name.”

“Okay,” Jack says, and as Loki moves toward the door, Jack looks at Jerry properly. This time, he really studies Jerry’s face, seeming to take it in, taking in all the ways that Jerry’s face is different to his own, taking in Jerry’s face. “Can I— Can I, um, can I tell you, wh… Why?”

“Sure you can,” Jerry says. Jack swallows, hard, and he hesitates, his hands clutched awkwardly before his chest— “You can come closer. Do you want—” Jack’s arms are thrown around Jerry’s neck, and his face is buried against Jerry’s chest: Jerry inhales, and he takes in the scent of Jack’s shampoo, which is minty and strong-smelling. He shudders against Jerry’s chest, but he clutches at him tightly, and unsure what else to do, Jerry rubs his back, gently running his fingers up and down his spine.

Is this what it’s like? To have a son?

He doesn’t know. He never thought about it before, not like this.

“It’s okay,” Jerry murmurs against his hair, and Jack squeezes him even tighter. “It’s okay, honey. Just— Just tell me.” Jack heaves in a gasp of air, sniffling quietly… And when he starts talking, it seems like he’ll never stop.


	4. Chapter 4

**JACK BELLICEC**

He’s acting like a baby.

He knows he is, that he’s acting like a baby, all but clambering into a stranger’s lap, except that Jerry’s chest is warm and his belly is soft and he’s holding Jack _so tightly_ , and Jack remembers how his father used to hold him until he turned ten and he was too old to be hugged or held in somebody’s lap, even when he was terrified of some noise in the dark or thunderstorms or dogs or frogs or speeding cars or—

And he’d gotten over most of it. He had, he really had: Nancy had held his hand and brought him to the fire station and let him stay very still as the fire station’s dalmatian, Clementine, had come close and licked his nose; Nancy had made him put his hand in frog spawn, and when he’d felt it he’d laughed, and immediately become so much more gentle with it; Nancy laid in bed with him that one thunderstorm rolled in and Jack had been shaking in his bed until she’d laid her head on his chest and said she wouldn’t let him go until his heart stopped beating so fast.

“I think she’s dead,” Jack whispers against Jerry’s neck.

“Who?” Jerry asks, and his breath is hot against Jack’s hair, and Nancy has always said that Jack’s hair is his best quality (and the clones couldn’t mimic that, could they, because they were slimy and wet and the hair had looked wrong where it had grown on its head—) except for maybe how long his legs are and how easily he can reach the top shelves in the kitchen, and Jack feels like he might just burst into tears as he grips a little too tightly at Jerry’s shirt and tries to press even closer. “Who, sweetheart?”

“My wife,” Jack says. “My wife, my mom and dad, and Matthew, and even Doctor Kibner and I never liked Doctor Kibner and I always felt he was a nasty— Not that I don’t believe in psychiatry, but _he’s_ a fraud, and— But he doesn’t deserve to… No one deserves to…” Jack heaves in a gasp of air, and Jerry strokes his hand over Jack’s back, just like Jack’s dad had used to do, and he shudders as Jerry _rocks_ him, holding him close and holding him— “I’m not making any sense, I know I’m not, and I know it must seem so stupid but you don’t… You don’t understand…” Jerry doesn’t say anything, just keeps on holding him, and Jack swallows hard, feeling how thick it is in his throat, feeling his tears almost wet as he thinks of New York surrounded by pods and plants and dying people and Nancy dead, and Matthew dead, and Matthew’s friend, Elizabeth, and the Brazilian guy that he always talks to in the bodega next to the bathhouse, and all their customers, and… “They came… They— Aliens, they’re aliens, and they come as… They look like, just like little flowers, little plants, and Mr Gianni brought one into the bathhouse – me and Nancy, we run a bathhouse, mud baths, it was her aunt and uncle’s place but then they died of carbon monoxide poisoning and Nancy always said they should get a smoke alarm but then they never did and then they died, and it was terrible, but Nancy was the closest to them and then she inherited the parlour and of course I went with her because we’re best friends and then my mother said we should get married if we’re going to do that and I didn’t want to but Nancy said it only made sense and it would make people less suspicious, and I said, suspicious of what, and she said, you know, and I said…” He’s talking too much and he can’t make his mouth stop, and instead of trying to take the conversation in a less revealing direction, he bursts into tears.

Why is he acting like this? Why is he so hysterical? He’s never been this hysterical in his life, he’s never been like this, never cried and shook and been unable to stop his mouth from moving and he doesn’t understand why because he was great under pressure before, before, when they were coming up with a plan, he _is_ great under pressure, he is, he always has been…

“Okay,” Jerry says in a quiet, measured tone, and Jack remembers he used to have a tone like that and he maybe had a short temper when he was in the room with Doctor Kibner and Matthew and Nancy and they were trying to figure out a plan, he could be even although he was a little close to snapping, but this is different, he can’t stop shaking and he feels like his heart is going to pound out of his chest and he feels like he can’t breathe, like he can’t breathe, like he’s going to die! Why? Why!? “So they were like flowers, like little plants. What did they do?”

“They…” Jack crams his face as hard as he can against Jerry’s neck as he closes his eyes as tightly as possible, trying to forget it, trying to forget the image of the ugly simulacrum that the plant had made in the mudhouse, how it had mimicked _Jack_ , and how it had… He had felt it sapping away at his— And he’d been so tired, he’d just been so _tired_ , and he’s tired even now, although he’s been unconscious for ages at a time, even though Loki had said he’d been… “If you fell asleep, they… I don’t know how it worked, it was an invasion, Matthew said they came from the sky, they— And people just brought them in because they were these cute little flowers and they grew so fast except if you fell asleep they’d dig right into your brain and the flowers would grow and they’d make a fascs— a fac… a copy, a copy of you, and after it was done, you’d just crumble to dust and ashes, and then it’d get up, the clone, except it wasn’t a clone, not really, because it wouldn’t be _you_ , it wouldn’t have your heart or your brain – it wouldn’t… _Feel anything_. They were so terrifying, I can’t even describe the… The energy, the aura, they were so terrifying, and I was scared but we had to stay strong and I had to protect Nancy and she always protects me and that’s just what we do but then I, but the— I don’t know what’s wrong with me, this has never happened before, I’ve never cried for so long or been so terrified or, my heart is, I feel like it’s gonna explode—”

“Okay,” Jerry says quietly, rocking him just slightly. “Okay, Jack, I want you to inhale for me, okay? I want you to inhale to the count of four – one, and two, and three, and four… Hold it.” Jack does. He presses his lips together and he feels the breath having inflated his lungs, feels it straining against his chest, and then Jerry says, “Okay, exhale, but not all at once – on the count of four again, okay? Keep blowing it out. One, two, three, four…”

They do it a few times.

Breathing to a count, inwardly and then outwardly, and Jack feels himself holding Jerry a little less tightly, feels his grip loosen on the older man. He feels stupid. He feels stupid, and small, and ridiculous, and he leans back slightly, glancing up at Jerry’s face.

Immediately, the panic hits him in the chest with the force of a blow, and he turns his head rapidly away again. “That’s okay,” Jerry says, and they go through the breathing exercise again, as Jack tries to stop his head from swimming with images of clones with his face, and feeling his nose bleed, feeling himself crumble into dust…  “That’s okay, you don’t have to look at me – you don’t have to look at any of us, okay?”

“Okay,” Jack echoes. “How— How many… Are there a lot…?”

“There’s eight of us,” Jerry murmurs, and to keep from looking at his face, looking at his too-familiar features, he look at Jerry’s neck instead. Jerry’s neck is just as long as Jack’s is, but unlike Jack, who can’t really grow more than peach fuzz, there’s dark stubble on his neck and on the underside of his chin and his jaw.

“Do you have to shave a lot?” Jack asks softly.

“Uh huh,” Jerry says. “Every day. How old are you, Jack?”

“I’m twenty-four,” Jack murmurs. “I’m sorry, I sound… I sound like a kid.” Jerry exhales quietly, and he reaches up, gently putting a hand through Jack’s hair – and he does it so easily and so gently and Jack has to wonder if he has kids, if he… This isn’t his father, though. Jack’s father is an accountant and he’s not very touchy-feely with anybody, because Jack’s too old…

“No, you don’t,” Jerry says. “Where are you from, Jack?”

“Albany,” Jack answers. “But the— mine and Nancy’s bathhouse, it’s in San Francisco. We packed— You know, we packed up everything, moved across the… Her aunt and uncle loved her a lot. We were gonna move to NYC, but then… They weren’t that old, you know. They were in their late thirties. They always talked about the bath house as if it’d be Nancy’s retirement, you know? We were gonna… I’m a poet, so I was gonna write, and she paints, so we…” Jack feels himself trail off, and then he says, “Everything happened very fast, and I never expected anything to happen that fast. I wasn’t ready for it – that’s stupid of me, I guess. I was thinking of going to university, but we were twenty when they died, so we just… Do you think she’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” Jerry says. “But this… This whole thing, uh, this thing on Sakaar, you know, when it’s over— It’ll be okay. We’ll just worry about Sakaar first, okay?”

“What do you do?” Jack says softly, wanting the distraction. “Where are you from?”

“I’m a New Yorker,” Jerry murmurs. “Brooklyn, born and raised. I’m a network executive at IBS – it’s a television network, does a mix of daytime and night time programming. We’ve, uh, we just got our morning news show back off the ground after a long-running scare, actually – _Daybreak_. I used to be a writer too.”

“For TV?” Jack asks. It feels weird, making conversation like this and being as close to the older man as he is, but Jerry is warm and he doesn’t really want to move away, and maybe that makes him a coward, and a child… He _aches_ for Nancy. He’s not used to being away from her, and he knows that he’s stupid compared to her, that he always has been: he gets lost in daydreams and idle thoughts and he gets distracted and is sometimes impractical, but Nancy is so smart, and so patient, and so kind, and he does try hard to be useful, and he does work hard, and he does his best to _help_ …

“No,” Jerry says. “I was a journalist, Started out, uh, when I was your age, after college, worked in a print paper for a while, and then I became a war correspondent. You know what that is?”

“No,” Jack murmurs, feeling a little embarrassed. “I don’t— I try to avoid… I try not to read the newspapers too often, I don’t… I find them depressing. Sorry.”

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Jerry replies delicately, stroking his shoulder. “Nothing wrong with not reading the papers. Growing up in the 60s, Christ, I couldn’t stand reading the paper. Even when I was in college, you know… A war correspondent is pretty much what it sounds like – they sent me out to warzones, and I’d report back on what was happening, send news back to the US. I was in Angola, in ’79, and a few years later, I went to Lebanon to cover the civil war there. Kinda did that through the 80s, into the 90s, and then, uh, and then in ’96, they offered me a job on the network. I came home, for good, and I, uh, I worked in their news division ‘til I got the exec job in ’03, about eight years back.”

“How old are you?” Jack asks. “Oh. Is that rude?”

“Nah,” Jerry says mildly. “I, uh, I’m fifty-eight.”

“Isn’t that young, to be made a TV exec? If you were… I don’t know how young. Fifty.”

“Fifty,” Jerry confirms. “But they were just a news network back then, making the transition to television. I, uh… I kinda heralded everything, I guess. Had no idea what I was doing. Still don’t.” Jack lets out a shaky laugh, and he stares into space, trying to figure that out in his head.

“So that’s— That’s 2010 for you?”

“2011,” Jerry corrects.

“Oh,” Jack says. “It was… It was 1978.”

“We’re all from different universes, the Grandmaster says,” Jerry murmurs, and when his palm rubs a slow circle against Jack’s back, Jack exhales shakily. “Different timestreams. Like in _Star Trek,_ you ever see that?”

“No,” Jack mutters. “My parents hated sci-fi.”

“Well—” Whatever Jerry is going to say, it’s cut off, and Jerry glances up as the door opens, taking in the alien bodies and faces and clothes as the servants enter, bringing some food. Jack eats in almost silence, picking at one or two things – his stomach is sick and roiling with inescapable nausea, and he doesn’t have much appetite.

Jerry doesn’t seem to mind the quiet. He lets Jack simmer in it, let him settle into it without having to talk, or talking himself…

It’s only when the other double knocks on the door and steps inside that Jack looks up again, but he doesn’t look at the guy’s face.  He looks instead at his tight t-shirt and the leather of his jacket, at his tight-fitted pants and his boots… They make him look a little bigger than he is, maybe, because Jack can see the slight curve of his belly and his thighs, the way muscle and fat rest on the same body. He looks _healthy_ , Jack’s mom would say. Healthy.

“Hey, Jerry,” he says quietly. “Jack, isn’t it? I’m Zach.”

“Hi,” Jack replies, mumbling the word against Jerry’s shoulder instead of leaning away from him so that the other man can see him properly, but Zach doesn’t seem to mind. He speaks very softly, his tone gentle, and Jack exhales as Zach continues.

“We’re splitting everyone into rooms – Ricky and Hatch together, and I was thinking me and you, Jerry? Two old guys together. That leaves Jack H. and Donald, and I was thinking Michael and Jack would be good to pair together.” Jerry stands up, touching Jack’s hair as he moves, and Jack exhales a sound of loss as Jerry speaks in a rapid, quiet whisper with Zach. He notes their body language, Zach’s calm, open stance and Jerry’s stiff body that becomes a little more relaxed…

“You sure?” he hears Jerry say.

“I’m sure,” Zach says. “We’ll only be right down the hall, anyway, and if they have that in common…”

“No, you’re right,” Jerry murmurs, and he turns back to Jack. “Jack, you okay with, uh, with rooming with Michael? He’s a writer, too, a journalist.”

“I don’t want to look at his face,” Jack says, his gaze fixed on the bedspread instead of on them.

“You don’t have to,” Jerry replies, his voice so gentle… He risks a glance upward, and he sees that Zach and Jerry are almost the same age, although Zach’s hair is thicker and looks healthier, and although Zach hasn’t got as much stubble on his face, and he’s a bigger guy, too – more muscular, although with the similar slight paunch to his belly.

“Sure. Fine.” Jack says. Zach leans back out into the corridor, and Jack hears him call to the other guys.

“So that leaves me and you, Jerry,” Zach says, and Jack sees the way he claps his arm to Jerry’s shoulder, the way his fingers linger on the arm. Jerry scoffs, shoving Zach’s hand off, and Zach says in a quiet voice, “You guys, uh, you should come out and meet the guys, if you feel up to it. It’s okay if you don’t.”

Jack doesn’t. He doesn’t want to leave the room, not now, not ever, and he shakes his head.

“That’s okay,” Zach murmurs, and he steps back again, before continuing, “But, uh, Jerry, I was thinking we should maybe, uh, have a team meeting… Can’t spare you both.” There’s a short pause, and Jack hates the idea of going out into the main part of the room, but the idea of being in here on his own makes his skin cold, and he immediately rushes to his feet, scrambling out from under the sheet.

“You don’t have to,” Jerry repeats, shooting a glance at Zach.

“No, it’s fine,” Jack says hurriedly, although he drags the blanket from the bed, wrapping it tightly around his shoulders, and he hears Jerry exhale quietly as he reaches for their plates, stacking them up. Jack’s skin feels too tight as they step out into the corridor, and he reaches out, grabbing for Jerry’s shirt. Immediately, Jerry wraps an arm around him, pulling Jack closer so that they can walk together, and they move out into the main room again.

✰ ✰ ✰ ✰ ✰

**MICHAEL GOLD**

Michael eats a lot, and initially he worries about how much he’s eaten, wonders if anybody’s going to look at him funny for it, but nobody does. Sitting on the rug beside Donald, he feels strangely at odds… He remembers everything that had happened, everything leading up to landing on the beach – that’s the funny thing, the weird thing. He remembers being in Sarah and Harold’s kitchen ( _and it had been Alex’s kitchen, for so long, for how long, while he was fixing up the house? Alex had eaten breakfast there, and eaten dinner there, and maybe he’d washed dishes in the sink, or tried to fix the wonky window latch that Harold kept complaining about—_ ) and he remembers jokingly saying that they’d all decided they were going to stay.

He’d wished it was true.

Desperately, he’d wished it was true, even when everyone laughed, even Sarah, and then Sarah had given Michael a look that was so… She’d looked at him, and her smile had kinda turned cold on her face, and not for the first time that weekend Michael had desperately wondered what he’d ever done wrong, why it was that Sarah hated him so particularly.

And he’d slid into his car, and he’d sat in the driver’s seat, his hands on the wheel. He’d sat there for nearly half an hour, staring into space, not starting the engine, and Harold had rapped on his window, said, “You asleep there, Mikey?”

“Nah,” Michael had said. “No, sorry, I just… I was just thinking about him.”

“You don’t have to go right away, you know, with everybody else,” Harold had said, because Harold has always been the kindest man in the world, with no sense of  angry it’d make Sarah, how much Sarah hates Michael, how much— “You could stick around a while longer, write for your, uh, write for your Yankee newspaper from down here.”

“No,” Michael had replied, forcing a smile on his face, and he’d shook Harold’s hand through the window, looked at the paternal features, and… Had he looked like that, in college? Had he always _looked_ like such a dad? Michael hadn’t been sure at the time, and he isn’t sure now, if Harold’s always been paternal, or if he’s grown into it…

He’d been pulling onto the highway, and then he can’t remember anything else. Maybe he was in a car accident – he hates driving, hates driving long distance even more, ever since his parents died in that car accident and he had to identify the bodies, see his parents bloody and gory and messed up… And he hadn’t been able to go to the funeral, because he’d had an exam. He still remembers how they’d looked, on the metal tables in the city morgue, cold and dead and ripped to pieces, half by the car, half by the mortician… He’d cried into Alex’s arms that night. All his tears had soaked into his own beard, and he hadn’t thought he’d ever stop crying. He’d never cried in front of someone before that night, in front of anyone.

Maybe it was a car accident. Maybe this is a coma.

“Me, I was, uh, I was asleep in bed,” Jack says. The other guys all nod their heads, and Michael listens as Ricky and Hatch explain where they both were, how they’d both gotten drunk before climbing back into bed with their wives, and how they’d woken up here, on Sakaar.

“What about you, Michael?” Donald asks. “Were you asleep, too?”

“No,” Michael says. “I was conscious, but I don’t remember him taking me. I was in my car, and I was just joining the freeway to drive back home. I was in South Carolina, for a funeral.” There’s a momentary pause, and Michael doesn’t look up, because he doesn’t want to feel the way they’re all looking at him, like how people used to look at him when he was in college, and somebody mentioned that Michael’s parents were dead. That’s still a familiar look, even now.

“I’m sorry,” Donald says softly. The sympathy in his voice sounds real, at least. He’s a nice guy, Donald is – Michael knows he’s a nice guy, and he reminds Michael—

“It’s fine,” Michael says, and he shrugs his shoulders. “Hadn’t talked to the guy in ten years. We went to college together.” It’s true. It is true, that they hadn’t talked in ten years, him and Alex, except that it isn’t fine, and his chest hurts and his heart aches and he feels like he wants to be sick… None of the other guys asks any questions because at that moment, Jerry and Zach come back into the room, and Michael looks at the young guy curled under Jerry’s shoulder, wrapped tightly in a blanket. All Michael can really see of him is thick head of curly hair, and when Jerry sits down on a couch, the young guy – Jack Bellicec, his name is –  keeps pressed right against him… He’s _shaking_. Michael can see him, can see the way that he’s visibly trembling like something in an earthquake. This kid is going to be his roommate, and he’s so frightened just of being in a room with them that he can’t even sit down without shivering… He’s frightened of clones, Jack had said. Like he’s dealt with them before.

“I’m Michael,” he says quietly, from his place on the floor. He does his best to keep his voice even, without letting it crack or shake, and he doesn’t try to lean into the younger man’s field of vision, instead staying on the floor with his arms loosely wrapped around his knees. “I don’t snore, I swear.”

“Oh,” he says, the words muffled slightly by Jerry’s shoulder, but they’re spoken confidently and without shyness. “Is this a bad time to say I do?”

“Probably,” Michael says.

“That’s okay, then,” Jack Bellicec says. “I don’t snore either.” Michael huffs out an amused noise, smiling slightly, and Zach puts his hands in his pockets, turning to look at the group, and they each glance at him, at their de-facto leader. Michael wonders what it must be like, to have that kind of confidence, to walk into a new group of people and just realize you’re the one in charge, and act like it. Alex had been like that, in college.

“The Grandmaster,” Zach says quietly. “He, uh, he said there’d be games. Challenges. I kinda got the impression that this is all just fancy words for torturing us, for seeing what we can take, what kind of pressure he can put us under… We need to, uh, we need to stick together, is what I’m saying. Outside of these quarters, when we go out into the corridors, into the food hall, I don’t think any of us should be on our own. Groups of three or more, ideally, but at least in pairs – no one goes anywhere on their own. That seem reasonable?”

“Yeah,” Ricky says quietly, voicing the affirmative nods they all give in response, and Zach reaches up, slowly passing his hand over his mouth, thoughtful.“And… the A-Team. I think we should, uh, reach out to them, I guess. See what they’re about. I don’t think we should trust them right off the bat, because we don’t know, you know, if they’re trustworthy people, we can’t… We can’t assume that right off the bat, I guess, although I wish we could…” Michael glances to Jerry, who looks like he’s on the verge of rolling his eyes, and Michael feels his mouth twist slightly, wondering exactly what that’s about. “But we should see what they’re like.”

“Did the Grandmaster mention anything about them?” Jerry asks, looking around the room. Michael glances up at Donald and at Ricky and Hatch, at Jack Harrison. Jack Bellicec ­has leaned back slightly from Jerry’s body, disentangling himself from under Jerry’s arm, and he is studiously focusing on the lines of his own palms. He looks very young, Michael thinks – would Michael have looked that young, when he was in his early twenties, if he hadn’t had the beard all through college, and the long hair? Maybe he would have. He isn’t sure. “To any of us?”

There’s a chorus of shaking heads and quiet negatives, and Michael asks, “Do you think he’s going to kill us? Like the guy he killed in front of you?” Zach looks down at him, his expression thoughtful, and then he looks to Jerry, but Jack H. talks first.

“What Loki said, about us being compensated,” Jack says softly. “I think he meant it. Even if we die, I don’t know that it’s… permanent. I get the impression he’s used to the impermanence of pesky little things like death.” He says it with a kind of passing disregard, as if talking about stuff like this is almost casual for him.

“I think maybe you’re right,” the younger Jack says quietly, and Michael feels a cold shiver run up his spine.

Later, when they go into their bedrooms, Michael faces against the wall so that Jack doesn’t have to look at him, and he kicks off his shoes and shrugs off his sweater and his belt, putting the latter two on the top of the dresser. Jack slides into the other bed before he’s done, and when Michael glances at him, he sees that Jack is facing against the wall too, curled up on his side in the foetal position.

“Are you married?” Jack says quietly: Michael can barely hear it even in the silence of the room, and the question needles into him as he moves to turn off the light. Lying down on the bed, he can see Jack’s silhouette on the bed, half-lit by the Sakaarii starlight coming in through the window on the wall above their beds.

“No,” Michael says. _Of course you aren’t_ , he almost hears, in Sarah’s voice, or in Karen’s, or in Meg’s, or Nick’s. It doesn’t matter who’d say it – it just matters that one or several of them would, and maybe they’d be right. Michael’s never been good with women, has always been too earnest and too overeager and maybe, really, he hasn’t ever wanted to be good with women. He likes sex. He likes sex, and he likes tumbling in the dark with somebody, likes feeling their bodies against his, but he’s never really been good at navigating the intimacy that comes with a relationship, sharing stuff with someone, letting them in to see him cry or be scared or—

How do you do that? He’s sure that you must have to, to be married, but no one’s ever appealed to him like that, no one’s ever… No one’s ever wanted to be close to Michael like that, except for Alex, and that was back in college, and then when they graduated Alex stopped answering his calls, and then he moved, and Michael knew he was down in North Carolina and couldn’t bring himself to force himself back into Alex’s life, and now here he is, he’s alone.

And Alex slit his wrists in the bath, and for the past few days Michael has looked at himself in the mirror and shaved himself in front of it, knowing that they found Alex’s corpse in the tub behind him, and wondering, wondering how it felt for him, and why he had done it, and if Michael could have helped, and how it’d feel to take his razor and just…

“Oh,” Jack says. “I am.”

“What’s her name?” Michael asks, reflexively.

“Nancy,” Jack says. “We were friends as kids, and then we kinda just… You know. Got married.”

“Childhood sweethearts,” Michael supplies.

“Not really,” Jack mutters, and he seems to get a little bit smaller where he curls up under the blanket, his face pressed tight against the pillow. Michael looks at his back, at how skinny and small Jack seems under his blankets.

“What do you mean?” Michael asks.

“I’m not anybody’s sweetheart,” Jack says, almost defensively. “We love each other. That’s all.” Michael frowns, and for a few moments the silence passes between them and it bounces back and forth like an echo in a chamber. It seems like an odd thing to get defensive about, strange… “Why were Jerry and Zach whispering about us? What do we have in common?”

“I don’t know,” Michael answers. “When were they whispering about us?”

“Before we came back in the main room,” Jack says. “I don’t know what they said.”

“Oh,” Michael says. “I don’t know. We’re both young, I guess.”

“Maybe.”

“Why were you screaming?” Michael asks. “You were making the windows rattle.” Jack doesn’t say anything – neither of them does, for a long time. Michael doesn’t know which of them falls asleep first, but in the silence, it feels easy to drop off.

He wakes in the middle of the night to Jack screaming in his sleep, shuddering on the bed like a banshee, and he falls asleep again to the sight of Jerry stroking Jack’s hair, with the weight of Zach’s body on the corner of Michael’s mattress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some mentions of suicide in this one - that'll be a regular from Michael's POV.


End file.
